Sydney Harbour Hospital: Evie′s Bombshell
Sydney Harbour Hospital: Evie's Bombshell
Amy Andrews
The only way Evie Lockheart could say goodbye to Dr Finn Kennedy was by allowing herself to surrender one more time to temptation.Admitting out loud she felt more for the guarded surgeon was never an option. Then a bombshell rocks Evie to her very core. Now she must tell the man whose delectable smile haunts her dreams that this time she will not let him walk away.
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!
Sydney Harbour
Hospital:
Evie’s Bombshell
Amy Andrews
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
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.’
‘Aucontraire,’ 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?
His muscles ached but in a good way. The hard physical labour he’d been doing the last five months had built up his lean body, giving definition to the long smooth muscles in his arms and legs. He felt fitter and more clear-headed than he had in a very long time.
He clenched and unclenched his right hand, marvelling in the full range of movement. He formed a pincer with his index finger and thumb and then tapped each finger in turn onto the pad of his thumb, repeating the process over and over. To think he’d despaired of ever getting any use of it back. It was weaker than his left hand for sure but he’d come a long way.
‘As good as a bought one.’
Finn looked up at the approaching form of Ethan Carter, with whom he’d served in the Middle East a decade ago. ‘I doubt I’ll ever be able to open jam jars.’
Ethan shrugged, handing Finn a beer. ‘So don’t open jam jars.’
Finn snorted at Ethan’s typical Zen-like reasoning as he lowered himself into the chair beside Finn’s. Ethan, a Black Hawk pilot, had trained as a psychologist after his discharge from the army and Beach Haven had been his brainchild. An exclusive retreat for injured soldiers five hundred kilometres north of Sydney where they could rest, recover, rehabilitate and refocus their lives. Only partially government funded, Ethan worked tirelessly to keep up the very generous private funding that had come Beach Haven’s way.
Neither of them said anything for a while, just looked out over the ocean and drank their beer.
‘It’s time, Finn.’
Finn didn’t look at Ethan. He didn’t even answer him for a long moment. ‘I’m not ready,’ he said eventually.
Prior to coming to Beach Haven, Finn would have thought being away from Sydney Harbour Hospital, from operating, was a fate worse than death. Now he wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to return.
Dropping out and becoming a hermit in a beach shack somewhere was immensely appealing. Maybe he’d even take up surfing.
‘Your arm is better. You can’t hide here for ever.’
He turned to Ethan and glared at him with a trace of the old Finn. ‘Why not?’
‘Because this isn’t who you are. Because you’re using this to avoid your issues.’
‘So I should go back to facing them in a high-stress environment where people’s lives depend on me?’
‘You’ve healed here, Finn. Physically. And mentally you’re much more relaxed. You needed that. But you’re not opening up emotionally.’
He shrugged and took a slug of his beer. ‘I’m a surgeon, we’re not emotional types.’
‘No, Finn. Being a surgeon is what you do, not who you are. Beyond all those fancy letters after your name you’re just a man who could do nothing but sit and cradle his dying brother while all hell was breaking loose around you. You couldn’t help him. You couldn’t save him. You couldn’t stop him from dying. You’re damaged in ways that go far beyond the physical.’
Finn flinched as Ethan didn’t even try to pull his punches. In five months they hadn’t once spoken about what had happened all those years ago. How Ethan had found a wounded Finn, peppered with shrapnel, holding Isaac.
‘But I think you find some kind of emotional release in operating. I think that with every person you save, you bring back a little bit of Isaac. And if you’re not going to open up about it, if surgery is your therapy of choice, then I think you should get back to it.’
More silence followed broken only by the pounding of surf.
‘So you’re kicking me out,’ Finn said, staring at the horizon.
Ethan shook his head. ‘Nope. I’m recommending a course of treatment. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.’
Finn’s thoughts churned like the foam that he knew from his daily foray to the beach swirled and surged against the rocks with the sweep and suck of the tide. He knew Ethan was right, just as he’d known that this reprieve from the world couldn’t last.
But his thoughts were interrupted by the crunching of tyres on the gravel drive and the arrival of a little red Mini sweeping into the parking area.
‘Are we expecting an arrival today?’ Ethan frowned.
‘Not as far as I know,’ Finn murmured.
They watched as the door opened and a woman climbed out. ‘Oh, crap,’ Finn said.
Ten minutes later Evie leaned against the veranda railing, looking out over the ocean view, the afternoon breeze blowing her loose hair off her shoulders. It ruffled the frayed edges of her denim cut-offs and blew the cream cotton of her loose, round-necked peasant blouse against her skin. She breathed the salt tang deep into her lungs.
‘Wow,’ she said, expelling her breath. ‘This is a spectacular view.’
‘It’s all right,’ Finn said, irked that he was enjoying the view of her perky denim-clad backside a hell of a lot more than the magnificent one-hundred-and-eighty-degree ocean view.
Since he’d slunk away in the night after their explosive session on his couch he’d thought about Evie a lot. Probably too much. Some of it R-rated. Most of it involving her big hazel eyes looking at him with love and compassion and pleading with him to let her in.
Up here he’d managed to pigeonhole her and the relationship she’d wanted so desperately as a bad idea. Standing a metre away from her, the long, toned lines of her achingly familiar, he had to clench his fists to stop from reaching for her.
Once upon a time he would have dismissed the impulse as a purely sexual urge. Something he would have felt for any woman standing here after five months of abstinence. A male thing. But solitude and time to think had stripped away his old defence mechanisms and as such he was forced to recognise the truth.
Evie was under his skin.
And it scared the hell out of him. Because she wouldn’t be happy with half of him. She would want all of him. And as Ethan had not long ago pointed out, he was damaged.
And it went far beyond that awful day ten years ago.
He didn’t know how to love a woman. He doubted he’d ever known. Not even Lydia.
‘How did you find me?’
Evie turned to face him, amazed at this version of Finn before her, lounging in a chair, casually knocking back a beer.
Had he ever been this chilled?
Okay, there had been a wariness in his gaze since she’d arrived but this Finn was still a stark contrast to Sydney Harbour Hospital Finn. The old Finn was a serious, driven, sombre professional who oozed energy and drive from every pore. His mind was sharp, his tongue even more so, and his pace had always been frenetic.
His drink of choice was seriously good Scotch.
This Finn was so laid back he may as well have been wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a flower behind his ear. His body was more honed, spare, and his skin had been kissed to a golden honey hue. A far cry from the haggard shadow he’d been when last she’d seen him.
Had he been surfing all this time?
The incredible blue of his eyes, so often frigid with disapproval, were like warm tropical waters amidst the golden planes of his stubbly face. And she wanted to dive in.
She’d been nervous that he’d take one look at her and know she was pregnant. Which was ridiculous given that it would be at least another month, maybe more, before it was obvious to anyone. But she really needn’t have worried. This Finn didn’t look like he’d be bothered if she’d turned up with his triplets.
Something rose in her chest, dark and ugly. It twisted and burned and she realised she was jealous. This was the kind of Finn she’d longed for, had known was there somewhere. The one he’d never shown her.
‘Daddy get a private detective?’ he goaded.
His voice had an edge that she recognised as the old Finn and she found herself responding accordingly. She was like Pavlov’s dog, still salivating over the slightest crumb.
She cleared her throat as emotion lodged like a fist in her trachea. ‘Lydia.’
‘Lydia?’ Finn sat up. ‘Lydia told you I was here?’ Isaac’s widow, the woman he’d had a seriously screwed-up co-dependent relationship with in the aftermath of his brother’s death, had been talking to Evie?
He frowned. ‘You know Lydia?’
Evie nodded calmly. Well, she’d met her anyway—she still had no clue as to their relationship. ‘I met her outside your apartment a couple of days after you left. She came to pick up some stuff for you. Told me you were okay. That you needed space. Time … She gave me her card.’
Finn shut his eyes and leaned back into the canvas hammock of the squatter’s chair. Trust Lydia to interfere. He opened his eyes to find her looking at him.
‘Your arm is better, I see.’
Finn looked down at it. He clenched and unclenched his fingers automatically, still amazed that he could do so. ‘Yes.’
Evie pressed her butt hard into the railing. She wanted to launch herself at him, throw herself into his lap, hug him to her, tell him she’d known it would get better, that he’d just needed a little faith and a lot of patience. But he didn’t look so laid back now and memories of what had happened last time she had been in his lap overrode everything else.
There was even more between them now than there’d ever been—more than he certainly knew—and she couldn’t think about any of it until she had him back in Sydney, until after he’d operated on their celebrity patient, until after she’d told him about the baby.
‘You must be very relieved,’ Evie murmured.
Finn didn’t want to make small talk with her. His mind had been clear ten minutes ago and now it was all clouded up again.
Seeing Evie after five months’ break made him realise how much he’d missed her wide hazel eyes and her interesting face. How much he’d taken her presence for granted when they’d worked in the same hospital, when she’d been there for him during his ops. How much he’d come to depend on seeing her, even though he’d pushed her away at every turn.
He’d been able to ignore all of that five hundred kilometres away from her—out of sight out of mind. But it was impossible to ignore now. She made him want things he didn’t know how to articulate.
And he wanted her gone.
So he could go back to ignoring her and all the stuff that bubbled to the surface whenever she was around all over again.
‘Why are you here?’ he demanded.
Evie swallowed at his sullen enquiry. His gaze was becoming chilly again and she shivered. ‘Prince Khalid bin Aziz.’
Finn frowned at the name from his past. Several years ago he’d revived a man who had collapsed in front of him on the street a couple of blocks from the hospital. He’d had no way of knowing at the time that the man was a Saudi oil prince. There’d been no robes, no staff, no security. He’d just been another heart to start and Finn’s medical training had taken over.
But it had certainly worked out well for the hospital, which had benefited from a huge donation.
‘What does he want?’
‘He wants you.’ Not as badly as she did, however. ‘He needs a quadruple bypass and he wants you and only you to perform it.’
Finn gripped his beer bottle harder as Evie opened a door he’d shut firmly behind him and a surge of adrenaline hit him like a bolt from the blue. He could almost smell the chemical cleanliness of the operating room, hear the dull slap as an instrument hit his gloved hand, feel the heat of the overhead lights on the back of his neck.
He shook his head, quashing the powerful surge of anticipation. ‘I’m not ready to come back.’
Evie’s looked down at him as he absently clenched and unclenched his right hand. Her heart banged loudly in her chest. What on earth was he talking about? Finn was a surgeon. The best cardiothoracic surgeon there was. He had to come back. And not just for the amir.
For him. For his sanity. For his dignity. The Finn she knew needed to work.
‘You look physically capable,’ she said, keeping her voice neutral.
Finn pushed up out of the chair as the decision he’d been circling around for five months crystallised. He walked to the railing, keeping a distance between them, his gaze locking on the horizon. ‘I don’t know if I’m going to come back.’
Evie stared at his profile. ‘To the Harbour?’
Finn shook his head as he tested the words out loud. ‘To surgery.’
Evie blinked, her brain temporarily shutting down at the enormity of his admission. Quit being a surgeon?
That was sacrilege.
She turned around slowly so she too was facing the horizon. Her hand gripped the railing as the line between the earth and the sky seemed to tilt. ‘My father will not be pleased,’ she joked, attempting to lighten the moment while her thoughts and emotions jumbled themselves into an almighty tangle.
‘Ah, yes, how is the great Richard Lockheart?’
Evie would have to have been deaf not to hear the contempt in Finn’s voice. It was fair to say that Finn was not on Team Richard. But, then, neither was she.
‘Already counting the pennies from the big fat donation Prince Khalid has promised the hospital.’
Evie wondered if Finn remembered that it was through Prince Khalid’s misfortune that she’d first met him. At the gala dinner that the prince had thrown in Finn’s honour the first time he’d donated one million dollars to the Sydney Harbour Hospital’s cardiothoracic department.
Finn had been as unimpressed as she to be there.
He snorted. ‘Of course. I should have known there would be money involved.’
Evie had never heard such coldness in Finn’s voice before. Not where his work was concerned, and it frightened her. She was used to it regarding her and anything of a remotely personal nature. But not his job.
She’d never thought she’d have to convince him to come back to work. She’d just assumed he’d jump back in as soon as he possibly could.
Just how long had his hand been recovered for?
‘So don’t do it for him,’ she said battling to keep the rise of desperation out of her voice. ‘Or for the money. Do it for the prince.’
‘There are any number of very good cardiac surgeons in Sydney.’
‘He doesn’t want very good. He wants the best.’
Finn turned to face her, propping his hip against the railing. ‘No.’
Evie turned too, at a complete loss as she faced him. ‘Please.’
She seemed to always be asking him for something he wasn’t prepared to give. Saying, please, Finn, please. And she was heartily sick of it. And sick of being rejected.
And if she wasn’t carrying his baby she’d just walk right away. But she was. And he needed to know—whatever the fallout might be.
She opened her mouth to tell him. Not to bribe him into doing what she wanted but because she could see his mind was made up, and before he sent her away for the last time, he had to know.
But Ethan striding out onto the veranda interrupted them. ‘Finn—’ Finn looked over Evie’s shoulder. ‘Oh … sorry … I thought I heard the car leave,’ Ethan said, smiling apologetically at Evie as he approached.
‘It’s fine,’ Evie murmured.
‘What’s up?’ Finn asked, dragging his gaze away from Evie’s suddenly pale face.
‘What’s the name of that agency you were telling me about?’
Finn frowned. ‘The medical staffing one? Why?’
‘Hamish’s father-in-law had a heart attack and died two hours ago. He’s taking two weeks off. I’ve been ringing around everywhere but no one’s available and I can’t run this place without a medico on board, it’s a government regulation.’
‘For God’s sake, Ethan,’ Finn said, his voice laced with exasperation, having had this conversation too many times before. ‘I’m a doctor.’
Ethan shook his head firmly. ‘You’re a client.’
Finn shoved his hand on his hip. ‘These are extenuating circumstances.’
Ethan chuckled. ‘No dice, buddy. Them’s the rules.’
‘You never used to be such a stickler for the rules.’
Ethan clapped him on the back. ‘I wasn’t running my own business back then.’
Evie was surprised at the obvious affection between the two men. Surprised even more at the spurt of jealousy. Finn wasn’t the touchy-feely kind. He maintained professional relationships with his colleagues and he’d been known to sit at the bar over the road from the hospital and knock back a few whiskies with them from time to time but he was pretty much a solo figure.
He and Ethan, a big bear of a man with a grizzly beard and kind eyes, seemed to go back a long way.
‘Problem?’ she asked, at Finn’s obvious frustration.
Finn shook his head then stopped as an idea took hold. He raked his gaze over her and knew it would probably be something he would come to regret, but choices were limited in the middle of nowhere.
Maybe the current pain in his butt could be Ethan’s silver lining. ‘Evie can do it.’
‘What?’ she gaped, her pulse spiking. ‘Do what?’
Ethan smiled at Evie apologetically. ‘I’m sorry. He’s not very good with social nuances, is he?’
‘She’s a fully qualified, highly trained, very good emergency doctor,’ Finn continued, ignoring Ethan’s remark.
‘You can’t just go springing jobs on people like that and acting like they have no choice but to take them,’ Ethan chided, his smile getting wider and wider. ‘Not cool, man. Maybe you should try asking the lady?’
Finn turned to Evie, his palms finding her upper arms, curling around her biceps. ‘I’ll come back and do Khalid’s surgery. But only if you do the two weeks here first.’
Ethan crossed his arms. ‘That’s not asking.’
Evie felt her belly plummet as if she’d just jumped out of a plane. She wasn’t sure if was due to his snap decision, his compliment over her medical skills or his touch but she couldn’t think when he looked at her with need in his eyes.
Even if it was purely professional.
‘C’mon, Princess Evie,’ Finn murmured, trying to cut through the confusion he could see in her hazel eyes. ‘Step outside your comfort zone for a while. Live a little.’
‘You suck at asking,’ Ethan interjected.
Evie swallowed as she became caught up in the heady rush of being needed by Finn. Not even the nickname grated.
Why not?
It would kill two birds with one stone—Khalid got his op and she bought herself some time. And her father had told her to do anything to get Finn back.
‘Okay,’ she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as shaky as it felt leaving her throat.
Finn nodded and looked at Ethan. ‘You’ve got yourself a doctor.’
Ethan looked from one to the other, his bewildered look priceless. Like he couldn’t quite believe that in less than a minute his major problem had been settled.
Neither, frankly, could Evie.
CHAPTER TWO
EVIE CLIMBED ONTO the back of the four-wheeler behind Ethan the next morning for the grand tour. Beach Haven retreat covered a couple of hundred acres and wasn’t something that could be quickly traversed on foot. Finn, who had disappeared shortly after he’d bribed her into staying for two weeks, was still nowhere to be seen. She didn’t ask Ethan where he was and he didn’t tell her.
Her father hadn’t been happy with the two-week delay but as the prince’s blocked arteries had been found on a routine physical and hadn’t been symptomatic, the surgery wasn’t urgent.
Their first port of call was the clinic. It could be seen from the homestead and she’d be able to walk easily to and from along the track, but as it was just the first stop of many today Ethan drove them across.
It looked like an old worker’s cottage from the outside but had been renovated entirely on the inside with a waiting area, a couple of rooms with examination tables and a minor ops room. A small dispensary with common medications, a storeroom, a toilet and a kitchenette completed the well-equipped facility. Thought had also been given to disabled access with the addition of ramps, widened doors and handrails.
‘Clinic starts at ten every morning. First come first served. There’s rarely a stampede. They usually come to see me.’
Evie cocked an eyebrow. ‘For therapy?’ He nodded. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d have any takers.’
Ethan shrugged. ‘It’s a pre-req for a place here. Weekly therapy—whether they like it or not.’
She thought not liking it would be the predominant feeling amongst a bunch of battle-weary soldiers. ‘Does that include Finn?’
He nodded. ‘No exceptions.’
Evie absorbed the information. Maybe that was why he seemed so chilled? But … surely not. The Finn she knew wasn’t capable of talking about his issues. ‘I don’t imagine those sessions would be very enlightening.’
Ethan laughed. ‘He’s pretty guarded, that’s for sure. But …’ he shrugged ‘… you can lead a horse to water … I can’t force him or anyone else to open up. I just hope like hell they do. In my opinion, there’s not a man who’s seen active duty who couldn’t do with some therapy.’
‘Is that why you opened this place?’ Evie asked. ‘A ruse to get soldiers into therapy?’
He laughed again and Evie found herself wondering why it was she couldn’t fall for someone like Ethan. He was attractive enough in a shaggy kind of a way with a ready smile and an easy manner.
‘Kind of,’ he said, his voice big and gruff like the rest of him. ‘Returned soldiers have issues. Those who have been physically injured even more so. It’s too easy for them to slip through the cracks. Succumb to feelings of uselessness, hopelessness and despair. Here they’re able to continue their rehab, contribute to society and find a little perspective.’
‘And you’re the perspective?’ she asked, smiling.
Ethan looked embarrassed but smiled back. ‘Anyway …’ he said, looking around, ‘clinic is done by twelve and then your day is your own as long as you stay on the property and have your pager on you in case an emergency arises.’
‘Does that happen very often?’
Ethan shook his head. ‘The last one was a couple of months ago when there was an incident with a nail gun.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Do I want to know?’
He grinned and shook his head. ‘Nope.’
Evie nodded slowly, also looking around. ‘So, that’s it? A two-hour clinic and the odd nail-gun emergency?’
Ethan nodded. ‘Think you can cope?’ he teased.
Compared to the frenetic pace of a busy city emergency department Evie felt as if Ethan had just handed her the keys to paradise. And there was a beach to boot! ‘I think I can hack the pace,’ she murmured. ‘In fact, I think I may just have died and gone to heaven.’
He grinned. ‘C’mon, I’ll show you the rest.’
Ten minutes later they pulled up at what appeared to be a massive shed that actually housed an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool and a large gym area where she caught up with Bob, the physiotherapist she’d met last night. He was in the middle of a session with two below-knee amputees so they didn’t chat.
From there it was another ten minutes to a series of three smaller sheds. The side doors were all open and the sounds of electric saws and nail guns pierced the air as Ethan cut the bike engine.
‘This is where we build the roof trusses I was telling you about last night,’ Ethan said as they dismounted.
With a noticeably absent Finn over dinner last night, Ethan had filled her in on the flood-recovery project the retreat participants contributed to during their stay. Several extreme weather events had led to unprecedented flooding throughout Australia over the previous two years and demand for new housing was at a premium. Roof trusses were part of that. It was a small-scale project perfect for Ethan’s ragtag band of clients, which aided both the flood and the soldiers’ recovery.
It was win-win.
They entered the nearest workshop, which was a hive of activity. The aroma of cut timber immediately assailed Evie and she pulled it deep into her lungs. One by one the men stopped working.
‘I suspect,’ Ethan whispered out of the side of his mouth, ‘you may well see an increase in visits to the clinic in the next few days. Just to check you out. Not a lot of women around here.’
Evie smiled as all but one lone nail gun pistoned away obliviously. It stopped too after a few moments and the owner turned and looked at her.
It was Finn.
Evie’s breath caught in her throat. He was wearing faded jeans and an even more faded T-shirt that clung in all the good places. A tool belt was slung low on his hips. Used to seeing him in baggy scrubs, her brain grappled with the conflicting images.
Her body however, now well into the second trimester and at the mercy of a heightened sex drive, responded on a completely primitive level.
Tool-Man Finn was hot.
A wolf whistle came from somewhere in the back.
‘Okay, okay back to work.’ Ethan grinned. ‘Don’t scare our doctor away before her first day.’
One by one they resumed their work. Except Finn, who downed his nail gun, his arctic gaze firmly fixed on her as he strode in her direction.
‘Uh-oh,’ Ethan said out of the corner of his mouth. ‘He doesn’t look too happy.’
Evie couldn’t agree more. She should be apprehensive. But he looked pretty damn sexy, coming at her with all that coiled tension. Like he might just slam her against the nearest wall and take her, like he had their first time.
‘I don’t think happy is in his vocabulary.’
Finn pulled up in front of Ethan—who seriously should know better than to bring a woman into an environment where most of the men hadn’t seen one in weeks—and glared at his friend. Who had clearly gone mad.
‘What is she doing here?’ he demanded.
Ethan held up his hands. ‘Just showing the lady around.’
‘She only needs to know where the clinic is,’ Finn pointed out.
‘Well, apart from common courtesy,’ Ethan murmured, his voice firm, ‘Evie really should know the lie of the land in case of an emergency.’
Finn scowled at his friend’s logic. ‘Now she knows.’ He turned and looked at Evie in her clothes from yesterday, her hair loose. ‘This is no place for a woman,’ he ground out.
Having been in the army for a decade and here for almost five months, Finn knew these men and men just like them. Even hiding away, licking their wounds, sex was always on their mind.
Evie felt her hackles rise. Had she slipped back into the Fifties? She glared at him, her gaze unwavering. ‘You ought to talk,’ she snapped, pleased the background noise kept their conversation from being overheard. ‘What kind of a place is this for a surgeon, Finn? Wielding a nail gun when you should be wielding a scalpel!’
Finn ignored the dig. ‘Get her out of here,’ he said to Ethan.
Finn scowled again as Ethan grinned but breathed a sigh of relief when Evie followed Ethan out, every pair of eyes in the workshop glued to her butt.
His included.
On their next leg, they passed a helipad and a small hangar with a gleaming blue and white chopper sitting idle.
‘Yours?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘Handy piece of transport in the middle of nowhere.’
They drove to a large dam area, which had been the source of the silver perch they’d eaten last night. Above it evenly spaced on a grassy hill sat ten pre-fab dongas.
‘Each one has four bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and common area,’ Ethan explained, as he pulled up under a shady stand of gumtrees near the dam edge and cut the engine. ‘They’re not luxurious but they’re better than anything any of us slept in overseas.’
‘So your capacity is forty?’
‘Actually, it’s forty-five if you count the homestead accommodation,’ Ethan said, dismounting and walking over to inspect the water. ‘That’s over and above you, me, Bob and Finn.’
Evie nodded, also walking over to the water’s edge. The sun was warm on her skin and she raised her face to it for long moments. She could hear the low buzz of insects and the distant whine of a saw.
Ethan waited for a while and said, ‘So … you and Finn …’
Evie opened her eyes and looked at him. ‘What about me and Finn?’
‘You’re … colleagues? Friends …?’
Evie considered Ethan’s question for a while. She didn’t know how to define them with just one word. Colleagues, yes. Lovers, yes. Soon to be parents, yes. But friends …?
She shrugged. ‘It’s … complicated.’
Ethan nodded. ‘He’s a complicated guy.’
Evie snorted at the understatement of the century. ‘You’ve known him for a while?’
Ethan picked up a stone at his feet and skipped it across the surface. ‘We served together overseas.’
‘You know his brother died over there?’
‘I know.’
‘It’s really messed with his head,’ she murmured.
Ethan picked up another stone and looked at it. ‘You love him?’ he asked gently.
Evie swallowed as Ethan followed his direct question with a direct look. She thought about denying it, but after five months of denying it it felt good to say it to someone. ‘Yes.’ She gave a self-deprecating laugh. ‘He’s not exactly easy to love, though, you know? And God knows I’ve tried not to …’
Evie paused. She had a feeling that Ethan knew exactly how hard Finn was to love. ‘I think what happened with his brother really shut him down emotionally,’ she murmured.
She knew she was making another excuse for him but she couldn’t even begin to imagine how awful it would be to hold Bella or Lexi in her arms as they died. The thought of losing her sisters at all was horrifying. But like that?
How did somebody stay normal after that?
How did it not push a person over the edge?
Ethan looked back at the stone in his hand, feeling its weight and its warmth before letting it fly to skim across the surface. ‘Yes, it did. But I think Finn had issues that predated the tragedy with Isaac,’ he said carefully.
Evie snapped to attention. ‘He told you that?’
Ethan snorted. ‘No. This is Finn, remember. He’s always been pretty much a closed book, Evie. At least as long as I’ve known him. And we go back a couple of years before what happened with Isaac. He’s been much, much worse since then but he wasn’t exactly the life of the party before that. Part of it is the things he’d seen, the injuries, the total … mayhem that is war. A person shuts themselves down to protect themselves from that kind of carnage. But I think there’s even more than that with Finn, stuff from his distant past.’
Evie stilled as the enormity of what she faced hit home. If Ethan was right she was dealing with something bigger than his grief. She looked at Ethan helplessly, her hand seeking the precious life that grew inside her, needing to anchor herself in an uncertain sea. ‘I don’t know how to reach him through all that.’
Ethan shrugged. ‘I don’t know how you do it either but I do know that he’s crying out for help and after that little performance in the workshop, I think you’re the one woman who can do it. I have never seen Finn so … emotionally reactive as just now.’
Evie cocked an eyebrow. ‘Is that what you call it?’
He grinned. ‘Don’t give up on him, Evie. I think you’ll make a human being out of him yet.’
Ethan had been right—word had got out. Evie’s clinic was bustling that first morning with the most pathetic ailments she’d ever treated. But it felt good to be able to practise medicine where there was no pressure or stress or life-and-death situations and the men were flirty and charming and took the news of her pretend boyfriend waiting back home for her good-naturedly.
She and Bob had lunch together on the magnificent homestead veranda serenaded by the crash of the surf. She yawned as Bob regaled her with the details of the nail-gun incident.
‘Sorry,’ she apologised with a rueful smile. ‘It must be the sea air.’
Bob took it in his stride. ‘No worries. You should lie down and have a bit of a kip, love. A siesta. Reckon the Italians have that right.’
Evie was awfully tempted. The pregnancy had made her tired to the bone and by the time she arrived home after manic twelve-hour shifts at Sydney Harbour she was utterly exhausted. She already felt like she was in a major sleep deficit—and the baby wasn’t even out yet! She fantasised every day about midday naps and she could barely drag herself out of bed on her days off.
But it didn’t seem right to wander off for a nanny nap in broad daylight—was that even allowed?
‘Go on,’ Bob insisted as she yawned again. ‘There’s nothing for you to do here and you have your pager.’
Evie hesitated for a moment longer then thought, What the hell?
She pulled the suitcase off her bed—it must have been delivered while she’d been working that morning. She’d tasked Bella with the job of packing two weeks’ worth of clothes for her because, as a fashion designer, Evie knew her sister would choose with care. Her youngest sister Lexi, on the other hand, who was thirty-two weeks pregnant and time poor, would have just shoved in the first things that came to hand.
As her head hit the pillow her thoughts turned to Finn, as they always did. Should she tell him, shouldn’t she tell him? When to tell him? Here? Back in Sydney? When would be a good time?
But the lack of answers was even more wearying than the questions and within a minute the sound of the ocean and the pull of exhaustion had sucked her into a deep, deep sleep.
Evie woke with a start three hours later. She looked at the clock. She’d slept for three freaking hours?
She must have been more tired than she’d thought!
She certainly hadn’t felt this rested in a long time. Maybe after two weeks here she’d have caught up on the sleep she needed.
She stretched and stared at the ceiling for a moment or two, her hand finding her belly without conscious thought.
‘Well, baby,’ she said out loud. ‘Should I track your father down and tell him right now or should I wait till we’re back in Sydney and he’s done the op?’
Evie realised she should feel silly, talking to a tiny human being in utero who couldn’t respond, but she’d spent so much time avoiding anything to do with the life inside her that it suddenly seemed like the most natural thing in the world—talking to her baby.
‘Move now if you think I should tell him today.’
Again, quite silly. If she was going to rely on airy-fairy reasoning to inform her critical decisions, it’d probably make more sense to flip a coin.
But then the baby moved. And not some gentle fluttering, is-it-or-isn’t it, maybe-it’s-just-wind kind of movement. It was a kick. A very definite kick. As if the baby was shaping up to play soccer for Australia.
Crap. The baby had spoken.
Twenty minutes later she’d changed into a loose, flowing sundress that she’d never seen before but which fitted her perfectly. Bella had attached a note to say, ‘Designed this especially for you. xxx.’
It was floaty and feminine with shoestring straps—perfect for the beach and the warm September day. And exactly what she needed to face Finn.
Finn couldn’t be found around the homestead but Ethan came out as she was standing at the veranda railing, contemplating the horizon.
‘Good clinic this morning,’ he said.
Evie smiled. ‘I’ve never known a bunch of tough guys see a doctor for such trifling complaints.’ Ethan laughed and she joined him. ‘I don’t suppose you know where Finn might be?’ she asked, when their laughter petered out.
‘I’d try the beach.’ He inclined his head towards the well-worn track that lead to the safety-railed cliff edge and the two hundred and twenty stairs that delivered the intrepid traveller straight onto the beach.
They were not for the faint-hearted …
‘He normally swims everyday around this time.’
‘Am I allowed to go that far away?’ she asked.
Ethan laughed. ‘Of course. It’s not that far. And even though it isn’t a private beach, we kind of consider it as within the property boundaries.’
She smiled. ‘Thanks.’
Halfway down she stood aside to let a buff-looking guy in boardies and a backpack run past, his below-knee prosthesis not seeming to hinder him an iota. He nodded at her as he pounded upwards and she turned to watch him as he scaled the stairs as if they were nothing.
Her gaze drifted all the way up the sheer cliff face to the very top. She was dreading walking back—running just seemed insane.
Her foot hit the warm sand a few minutes later and her gaze scanned the wide arc of yellow, unpatrolled beach for Finn. She couldn’t see him but as she walked closer to the thundering ocean she could see a towel discarded on the sand and she looked out at the water, trying to see a head amongst the continually rolling breakers.
Her heart beat in sync with the ocean as she searched in vain through the wild pounding surf and a hundred disaster scenarios scuttled through her head. She calmed herself with the knowledge that he was a strong swimmer and ignored the ominous power of the surging ocean. Then she spotted his head popping up out of the water. He was quite a distance out but she could see his wet hair was sleek, like a seal’s pelt, and his shoulders were broad and bare.
She sat on the sand next to his towel and waited.
Finn was aware of Evie from the minute she’d set foot on the beach. Some sixth sense had alerted him and he’d watched her advance towards the shoreline, obviously looking for him.
And, of course, she looked utterly gorgeous in a dress that blew across her body, outlining her athletic legs, her hair whipping across her face, the shoestring straps baring lovely collar bones and beautiful shoulders.
Just looking at her made him hard and he was grateful for the cover of ocean.
It had been so long since he’d touched her. He wanted to stride up the beach, push her back into the sand and bury himself in her. But he hated the feelings she roused in him and the loss of control he exhibited when he was with her.
Besides … it would just put them back at square one when he’d tried so hard—and succeeded—at putting distance between them.
He could tell, though, even from this distance, she was here to chat. And, God knew, he didn’t want to chat with her. Right now the only thing he wanted to do with her involved being naked and he was going to stay right here until he’d worn the impulse down.
He swam against and with the strong current until he was chilled to the bone and his arm ached. A part of him hoped she’d get sick of waiting and just leave. Or maybe her pager would go off. But she sat stubbornly staring out to sea, watching him until finally the chill was unbearable and, admitting defeat, he strode from the surf.
She handed him his towel as he drew level with her and he took it wordlessly, rubbing vigorously at his body. When he was done he wrapped it around his waist and threw himself down next to her, taking care to leave a gap. She didn’t say anything to him as they both sat and watched the ocean for a while, the sun’s rays beginning to work their magic on the ice that seemed to penetrate right down to his bones.
Although the ice around his heart was as impenetrable as always.
‘I hear you have a boyfriend,’ he said after a while.
Evie, her brain still grappling with the perfect words to tell Finn he was going to be a father and her stupid pregnant hormones still all aflutter from his sexy Adonis-rising-from-the-ocean display, didn’t register the terseness in his tone.
‘A cosmetic surgeon who owns a Porsche and comes from North Shore money,’ he continued.
Evie bit back a smile at the ill-disguised contempt in his voice. When choosing her fake boyfriend she’d deliberately chosen all the attributes Finn would despise. ‘Well, I figured if I was going to have a make-believe boyfriend I might as well go all out.’
Finn wasn’t mollified. ‘He sounds like a tosser.’
Evie smiled at the ocean. ‘Because he does lips and boobs or because of the Porsche?’
Finn glared at her as she continued to stare at the horizon. ‘Is that what you want, Princess Evie? Some blue-blooded prince to keep up your royal lineage?’
She turned to look at him, her nostrils flaring as the scent of sea salt and something her hormones recognised as quintessentially Finn enveloped her. ‘I think you know who I want.’
And suddenly the roar of the ocean faded as the pounding of her pulse took over. The fact she was supposed to be telling him about their baby also faded as her heart drummed a primitive beat perfectly at home in this deserted windswept landscape. The world of the beach shrank until there was just him and her and the sun stroking warm fingers over their skin, lulling her common sense into a stupor. His bare chest and shoulders teased her peripheral vision, his sexy stubble and wet, ruffled hair taunted her front and centre.
‘I’ve only ever wanted you, Finn,’ she murmured, her breath rough as her gaze fell to his mouth. Wanting to feel it on hers. To feel it everywhere. ‘And right now all I can think about is how good we are together.’
Finn shut his eyes, images of how good they were rolling through his brain as seductively as her voice, like a siren from the sea. He opened them again and her hazel eyes were practically silver with desire. ‘Evie …’
Her breasts grew heavy at the rawness of his voice. Longing snaked through her belly, hot and hard and hungry as she lifted her hand to his face, ran her fingers over his mouth. ‘I’ve wanted to kiss you every day for five months,’ she murmured.
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Amy Andrews
The only way Evie Lockheart could say goodbye to Dr Finn Kennedy was by allowing herself to surrender one more time to temptation.Admitting out loud she felt more for the guarded surgeon was never an option. Then a bombshell rocks Evie to her very core. Now she must tell the man whose delectable smile haunts her dreams that this time she will not let him walk away.
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!
Sydney Harbour
Hospital:
Evie’s Bombshell
Amy Andrews
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
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.’
‘Aucontraire,’ 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?
His muscles ached but in a good way. The hard physical labour he’d been doing the last five months had built up his lean body, giving definition to the long smooth muscles in his arms and legs. He felt fitter and more clear-headed than he had in a very long time.
He clenched and unclenched his right hand, marvelling in the full range of movement. He formed a pincer with his index finger and thumb and then tapped each finger in turn onto the pad of his thumb, repeating the process over and over. To think he’d despaired of ever getting any use of it back. It was weaker than his left hand for sure but he’d come a long way.
‘As good as a bought one.’
Finn looked up at the approaching form of Ethan Carter, with whom he’d served in the Middle East a decade ago. ‘I doubt I’ll ever be able to open jam jars.’
Ethan shrugged, handing Finn a beer. ‘So don’t open jam jars.’
Finn snorted at Ethan’s typical Zen-like reasoning as he lowered himself into the chair beside Finn’s. Ethan, a Black Hawk pilot, had trained as a psychologist after his discharge from the army and Beach Haven had been his brainchild. An exclusive retreat for injured soldiers five hundred kilometres north of Sydney where they could rest, recover, rehabilitate and refocus their lives. Only partially government funded, Ethan worked tirelessly to keep up the very generous private funding that had come Beach Haven’s way.
Neither of them said anything for a while, just looked out over the ocean and drank their beer.
‘It’s time, Finn.’
Finn didn’t look at Ethan. He didn’t even answer him for a long moment. ‘I’m not ready,’ he said eventually.
Prior to coming to Beach Haven, Finn would have thought being away from Sydney Harbour Hospital, from operating, was a fate worse than death. Now he wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to return.
Dropping out and becoming a hermit in a beach shack somewhere was immensely appealing. Maybe he’d even take up surfing.
‘Your arm is better. You can’t hide here for ever.’
He turned to Ethan and glared at him with a trace of the old Finn. ‘Why not?’
‘Because this isn’t who you are. Because you’re using this to avoid your issues.’
‘So I should go back to facing them in a high-stress environment where people’s lives depend on me?’
‘You’ve healed here, Finn. Physically. And mentally you’re much more relaxed. You needed that. But you’re not opening up emotionally.’
He shrugged and took a slug of his beer. ‘I’m a surgeon, we’re not emotional types.’
‘No, Finn. Being a surgeon is what you do, not who you are. Beyond all those fancy letters after your name you’re just a man who could do nothing but sit and cradle his dying brother while all hell was breaking loose around you. You couldn’t help him. You couldn’t save him. You couldn’t stop him from dying. You’re damaged in ways that go far beyond the physical.’
Finn flinched as Ethan didn’t even try to pull his punches. In five months they hadn’t once spoken about what had happened all those years ago. How Ethan had found a wounded Finn, peppered with shrapnel, holding Isaac.
‘But I think you find some kind of emotional release in operating. I think that with every person you save, you bring back a little bit of Isaac. And if you’re not going to open up about it, if surgery is your therapy of choice, then I think you should get back to it.’
More silence followed broken only by the pounding of surf.
‘So you’re kicking me out,’ Finn said, staring at the horizon.
Ethan shook his head. ‘Nope. I’m recommending a course of treatment. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.’
Finn’s thoughts churned like the foam that he knew from his daily foray to the beach swirled and surged against the rocks with the sweep and suck of the tide. He knew Ethan was right, just as he’d known that this reprieve from the world couldn’t last.
But his thoughts were interrupted by the crunching of tyres on the gravel drive and the arrival of a little red Mini sweeping into the parking area.
‘Are we expecting an arrival today?’ Ethan frowned.
‘Not as far as I know,’ Finn murmured.
They watched as the door opened and a woman climbed out. ‘Oh, crap,’ Finn said.
Ten minutes later Evie leaned against the veranda railing, looking out over the ocean view, the afternoon breeze blowing her loose hair off her shoulders. It ruffled the frayed edges of her denim cut-offs and blew the cream cotton of her loose, round-necked peasant blouse against her skin. She breathed the salt tang deep into her lungs.
‘Wow,’ she said, expelling her breath. ‘This is a spectacular view.’
‘It’s all right,’ Finn said, irked that he was enjoying the view of her perky denim-clad backside a hell of a lot more than the magnificent one-hundred-and-eighty-degree ocean view.
Since he’d slunk away in the night after their explosive session on his couch he’d thought about Evie a lot. Probably too much. Some of it R-rated. Most of it involving her big hazel eyes looking at him with love and compassion and pleading with him to let her in.
Up here he’d managed to pigeonhole her and the relationship she’d wanted so desperately as a bad idea. Standing a metre away from her, the long, toned lines of her achingly familiar, he had to clench his fists to stop from reaching for her.
Once upon a time he would have dismissed the impulse as a purely sexual urge. Something he would have felt for any woman standing here after five months of abstinence. A male thing. But solitude and time to think had stripped away his old defence mechanisms and as such he was forced to recognise the truth.
Evie was under his skin.
And it scared the hell out of him. Because she wouldn’t be happy with half of him. She would want all of him. And as Ethan had not long ago pointed out, he was damaged.
And it went far beyond that awful day ten years ago.
He didn’t know how to love a woman. He doubted he’d ever known. Not even Lydia.
‘How did you find me?’
Evie turned to face him, amazed at this version of Finn before her, lounging in a chair, casually knocking back a beer.
Had he ever been this chilled?
Okay, there had been a wariness in his gaze since she’d arrived but this Finn was still a stark contrast to Sydney Harbour Hospital Finn. The old Finn was a serious, driven, sombre professional who oozed energy and drive from every pore. His mind was sharp, his tongue even more so, and his pace had always been frenetic.
His drink of choice was seriously good Scotch.
This Finn was so laid back he may as well have been wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a flower behind his ear. His body was more honed, spare, and his skin had been kissed to a golden honey hue. A far cry from the haggard shadow he’d been when last she’d seen him.
Had he been surfing all this time?
The incredible blue of his eyes, so often frigid with disapproval, were like warm tropical waters amidst the golden planes of his stubbly face. And she wanted to dive in.
She’d been nervous that he’d take one look at her and know she was pregnant. Which was ridiculous given that it would be at least another month, maybe more, before it was obvious to anyone. But she really needn’t have worried. This Finn didn’t look like he’d be bothered if she’d turned up with his triplets.
Something rose in her chest, dark and ugly. It twisted and burned and she realised she was jealous. This was the kind of Finn she’d longed for, had known was there somewhere. The one he’d never shown her.
‘Daddy get a private detective?’ he goaded.
His voice had an edge that she recognised as the old Finn and she found herself responding accordingly. She was like Pavlov’s dog, still salivating over the slightest crumb.
She cleared her throat as emotion lodged like a fist in her trachea. ‘Lydia.’
‘Lydia?’ Finn sat up. ‘Lydia told you I was here?’ Isaac’s widow, the woman he’d had a seriously screwed-up co-dependent relationship with in the aftermath of his brother’s death, had been talking to Evie?
He frowned. ‘You know Lydia?’
Evie nodded calmly. Well, she’d met her anyway—she still had no clue as to their relationship. ‘I met her outside your apartment a couple of days after you left. She came to pick up some stuff for you. Told me you were okay. That you needed space. Time … She gave me her card.’
Finn shut his eyes and leaned back into the canvas hammock of the squatter’s chair. Trust Lydia to interfere. He opened his eyes to find her looking at him.
‘Your arm is better, I see.’
Finn looked down at it. He clenched and unclenched his fingers automatically, still amazed that he could do so. ‘Yes.’
Evie pressed her butt hard into the railing. She wanted to launch herself at him, throw herself into his lap, hug him to her, tell him she’d known it would get better, that he’d just needed a little faith and a lot of patience. But he didn’t look so laid back now and memories of what had happened last time she had been in his lap overrode everything else.
There was even more between them now than there’d ever been—more than he certainly knew—and she couldn’t think about any of it until she had him back in Sydney, until after he’d operated on their celebrity patient, until after she’d told him about the baby.
‘You must be very relieved,’ Evie murmured.
Finn didn’t want to make small talk with her. His mind had been clear ten minutes ago and now it was all clouded up again.
Seeing Evie after five months’ break made him realise how much he’d missed her wide hazel eyes and her interesting face. How much he’d taken her presence for granted when they’d worked in the same hospital, when she’d been there for him during his ops. How much he’d come to depend on seeing her, even though he’d pushed her away at every turn.
He’d been able to ignore all of that five hundred kilometres away from her—out of sight out of mind. But it was impossible to ignore now. She made him want things he didn’t know how to articulate.
And he wanted her gone.
So he could go back to ignoring her and all the stuff that bubbled to the surface whenever she was around all over again.
‘Why are you here?’ he demanded.
Evie swallowed at his sullen enquiry. His gaze was becoming chilly again and she shivered. ‘Prince Khalid bin Aziz.’
Finn frowned at the name from his past. Several years ago he’d revived a man who had collapsed in front of him on the street a couple of blocks from the hospital. He’d had no way of knowing at the time that the man was a Saudi oil prince. There’d been no robes, no staff, no security. He’d just been another heart to start and Finn’s medical training had taken over.
But it had certainly worked out well for the hospital, which had benefited from a huge donation.
‘What does he want?’
‘He wants you.’ Not as badly as she did, however. ‘He needs a quadruple bypass and he wants you and only you to perform it.’
Finn gripped his beer bottle harder as Evie opened a door he’d shut firmly behind him and a surge of adrenaline hit him like a bolt from the blue. He could almost smell the chemical cleanliness of the operating room, hear the dull slap as an instrument hit his gloved hand, feel the heat of the overhead lights on the back of his neck.
He shook his head, quashing the powerful surge of anticipation. ‘I’m not ready to come back.’
Evie’s looked down at him as he absently clenched and unclenched his right hand. Her heart banged loudly in her chest. What on earth was he talking about? Finn was a surgeon. The best cardiothoracic surgeon there was. He had to come back. And not just for the amir.
For him. For his sanity. For his dignity. The Finn she knew needed to work.
‘You look physically capable,’ she said, keeping her voice neutral.
Finn pushed up out of the chair as the decision he’d been circling around for five months crystallised. He walked to the railing, keeping a distance between them, his gaze locking on the horizon. ‘I don’t know if I’m going to come back.’
Evie stared at his profile. ‘To the Harbour?’
Finn shook his head as he tested the words out loud. ‘To surgery.’
Evie blinked, her brain temporarily shutting down at the enormity of his admission. Quit being a surgeon?
That was sacrilege.
She turned around slowly so she too was facing the horizon. Her hand gripped the railing as the line between the earth and the sky seemed to tilt. ‘My father will not be pleased,’ she joked, attempting to lighten the moment while her thoughts and emotions jumbled themselves into an almighty tangle.
‘Ah, yes, how is the great Richard Lockheart?’
Evie would have to have been deaf not to hear the contempt in Finn’s voice. It was fair to say that Finn was not on Team Richard. But, then, neither was she.
‘Already counting the pennies from the big fat donation Prince Khalid has promised the hospital.’
Evie wondered if Finn remembered that it was through Prince Khalid’s misfortune that she’d first met him. At the gala dinner that the prince had thrown in Finn’s honour the first time he’d donated one million dollars to the Sydney Harbour Hospital’s cardiothoracic department.
Finn had been as unimpressed as she to be there.
He snorted. ‘Of course. I should have known there would be money involved.’
Evie had never heard such coldness in Finn’s voice before. Not where his work was concerned, and it frightened her. She was used to it regarding her and anything of a remotely personal nature. But not his job.
She’d never thought she’d have to convince him to come back to work. She’d just assumed he’d jump back in as soon as he possibly could.
Just how long had his hand been recovered for?
‘So don’t do it for him,’ she said battling to keep the rise of desperation out of her voice. ‘Or for the money. Do it for the prince.’
‘There are any number of very good cardiac surgeons in Sydney.’
‘He doesn’t want very good. He wants the best.’
Finn turned to face her, propping his hip against the railing. ‘No.’
Evie turned too, at a complete loss as she faced him. ‘Please.’
She seemed to always be asking him for something he wasn’t prepared to give. Saying, please, Finn, please. And she was heartily sick of it. And sick of being rejected.
And if she wasn’t carrying his baby she’d just walk right away. But she was. And he needed to know—whatever the fallout might be.
She opened her mouth to tell him. Not to bribe him into doing what she wanted but because she could see his mind was made up, and before he sent her away for the last time, he had to know.
But Ethan striding out onto the veranda interrupted them. ‘Finn—’ Finn looked over Evie’s shoulder. ‘Oh … sorry … I thought I heard the car leave,’ Ethan said, smiling apologetically at Evie as he approached.
‘It’s fine,’ Evie murmured.
‘What’s up?’ Finn asked, dragging his gaze away from Evie’s suddenly pale face.
‘What’s the name of that agency you were telling me about?’
Finn frowned. ‘The medical staffing one? Why?’
‘Hamish’s father-in-law had a heart attack and died two hours ago. He’s taking two weeks off. I’ve been ringing around everywhere but no one’s available and I can’t run this place without a medico on board, it’s a government regulation.’
‘For God’s sake, Ethan,’ Finn said, his voice laced with exasperation, having had this conversation too many times before. ‘I’m a doctor.’
Ethan shook his head firmly. ‘You’re a client.’
Finn shoved his hand on his hip. ‘These are extenuating circumstances.’
Ethan chuckled. ‘No dice, buddy. Them’s the rules.’
‘You never used to be such a stickler for the rules.’
Ethan clapped him on the back. ‘I wasn’t running my own business back then.’
Evie was surprised at the obvious affection between the two men. Surprised even more at the spurt of jealousy. Finn wasn’t the touchy-feely kind. He maintained professional relationships with his colleagues and he’d been known to sit at the bar over the road from the hospital and knock back a few whiskies with them from time to time but he was pretty much a solo figure.
He and Ethan, a big bear of a man with a grizzly beard and kind eyes, seemed to go back a long way.
‘Problem?’ she asked, at Finn’s obvious frustration.
Finn shook his head then stopped as an idea took hold. He raked his gaze over her and knew it would probably be something he would come to regret, but choices were limited in the middle of nowhere.
Maybe the current pain in his butt could be Ethan’s silver lining. ‘Evie can do it.’
‘What?’ she gaped, her pulse spiking. ‘Do what?’
Ethan smiled at Evie apologetically. ‘I’m sorry. He’s not very good with social nuances, is he?’
‘She’s a fully qualified, highly trained, very good emergency doctor,’ Finn continued, ignoring Ethan’s remark.
‘You can’t just go springing jobs on people like that and acting like they have no choice but to take them,’ Ethan chided, his smile getting wider and wider. ‘Not cool, man. Maybe you should try asking the lady?’
Finn turned to Evie, his palms finding her upper arms, curling around her biceps. ‘I’ll come back and do Khalid’s surgery. But only if you do the two weeks here first.’
Ethan crossed his arms. ‘That’s not asking.’
Evie felt her belly plummet as if she’d just jumped out of a plane. She wasn’t sure if was due to his snap decision, his compliment over her medical skills or his touch but she couldn’t think when he looked at her with need in his eyes.
Even if it was purely professional.
‘C’mon, Princess Evie,’ Finn murmured, trying to cut through the confusion he could see in her hazel eyes. ‘Step outside your comfort zone for a while. Live a little.’
‘You suck at asking,’ Ethan interjected.
Evie swallowed as she became caught up in the heady rush of being needed by Finn. Not even the nickname grated.
Why not?
It would kill two birds with one stone—Khalid got his op and she bought herself some time. And her father had told her to do anything to get Finn back.
‘Okay,’ she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as shaky as it felt leaving her throat.
Finn nodded and looked at Ethan. ‘You’ve got yourself a doctor.’
Ethan looked from one to the other, his bewildered look priceless. Like he couldn’t quite believe that in less than a minute his major problem had been settled.
Neither, frankly, could Evie.
CHAPTER TWO
EVIE CLIMBED ONTO the back of the four-wheeler behind Ethan the next morning for the grand tour. Beach Haven retreat covered a couple of hundred acres and wasn’t something that could be quickly traversed on foot. Finn, who had disappeared shortly after he’d bribed her into staying for two weeks, was still nowhere to be seen. She didn’t ask Ethan where he was and he didn’t tell her.
Her father hadn’t been happy with the two-week delay but as the prince’s blocked arteries had been found on a routine physical and hadn’t been symptomatic, the surgery wasn’t urgent.
Their first port of call was the clinic. It could be seen from the homestead and she’d be able to walk easily to and from along the track, but as it was just the first stop of many today Ethan drove them across.
It looked like an old worker’s cottage from the outside but had been renovated entirely on the inside with a waiting area, a couple of rooms with examination tables and a minor ops room. A small dispensary with common medications, a storeroom, a toilet and a kitchenette completed the well-equipped facility. Thought had also been given to disabled access with the addition of ramps, widened doors and handrails.
‘Clinic starts at ten every morning. First come first served. There’s rarely a stampede. They usually come to see me.’
Evie cocked an eyebrow. ‘For therapy?’ He nodded. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d have any takers.’
Ethan shrugged. ‘It’s a pre-req for a place here. Weekly therapy—whether they like it or not.’
She thought not liking it would be the predominant feeling amongst a bunch of battle-weary soldiers. ‘Does that include Finn?’
He nodded. ‘No exceptions.’
Evie absorbed the information. Maybe that was why he seemed so chilled? But … surely not. The Finn she knew wasn’t capable of talking about his issues. ‘I don’t imagine those sessions would be very enlightening.’
Ethan laughed. ‘He’s pretty guarded, that’s for sure. But …’ he shrugged ‘… you can lead a horse to water … I can’t force him or anyone else to open up. I just hope like hell they do. In my opinion, there’s not a man who’s seen active duty who couldn’t do with some therapy.’
‘Is that why you opened this place?’ Evie asked. ‘A ruse to get soldiers into therapy?’
He laughed again and Evie found herself wondering why it was she couldn’t fall for someone like Ethan. He was attractive enough in a shaggy kind of a way with a ready smile and an easy manner.
‘Kind of,’ he said, his voice big and gruff like the rest of him. ‘Returned soldiers have issues. Those who have been physically injured even more so. It’s too easy for them to slip through the cracks. Succumb to feelings of uselessness, hopelessness and despair. Here they’re able to continue their rehab, contribute to society and find a little perspective.’
‘And you’re the perspective?’ she asked, smiling.
Ethan looked embarrassed but smiled back. ‘Anyway …’ he said, looking around, ‘clinic is done by twelve and then your day is your own as long as you stay on the property and have your pager on you in case an emergency arises.’
‘Does that happen very often?’
Ethan shook his head. ‘The last one was a couple of months ago when there was an incident with a nail gun.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Do I want to know?’
He grinned and shook his head. ‘Nope.’
Evie nodded slowly, also looking around. ‘So, that’s it? A two-hour clinic and the odd nail-gun emergency?’
Ethan nodded. ‘Think you can cope?’ he teased.
Compared to the frenetic pace of a busy city emergency department Evie felt as if Ethan had just handed her the keys to paradise. And there was a beach to boot! ‘I think I can hack the pace,’ she murmured. ‘In fact, I think I may just have died and gone to heaven.’
He grinned. ‘C’mon, I’ll show you the rest.’
Ten minutes later they pulled up at what appeared to be a massive shed that actually housed an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool and a large gym area where she caught up with Bob, the physiotherapist she’d met last night. He was in the middle of a session with two below-knee amputees so they didn’t chat.
From there it was another ten minutes to a series of three smaller sheds. The side doors were all open and the sounds of electric saws and nail guns pierced the air as Ethan cut the bike engine.
‘This is where we build the roof trusses I was telling you about last night,’ Ethan said as they dismounted.
With a noticeably absent Finn over dinner last night, Ethan had filled her in on the flood-recovery project the retreat participants contributed to during their stay. Several extreme weather events had led to unprecedented flooding throughout Australia over the previous two years and demand for new housing was at a premium. Roof trusses were part of that. It was a small-scale project perfect for Ethan’s ragtag band of clients, which aided both the flood and the soldiers’ recovery.
It was win-win.
They entered the nearest workshop, which was a hive of activity. The aroma of cut timber immediately assailed Evie and she pulled it deep into her lungs. One by one the men stopped working.
‘I suspect,’ Ethan whispered out of the side of his mouth, ‘you may well see an increase in visits to the clinic in the next few days. Just to check you out. Not a lot of women around here.’
Evie smiled as all but one lone nail gun pistoned away obliviously. It stopped too after a few moments and the owner turned and looked at her.
It was Finn.
Evie’s breath caught in her throat. He was wearing faded jeans and an even more faded T-shirt that clung in all the good places. A tool belt was slung low on his hips. Used to seeing him in baggy scrubs, her brain grappled with the conflicting images.
Her body however, now well into the second trimester and at the mercy of a heightened sex drive, responded on a completely primitive level.
Tool-Man Finn was hot.
A wolf whistle came from somewhere in the back.
‘Okay, okay back to work.’ Ethan grinned. ‘Don’t scare our doctor away before her first day.’
One by one they resumed their work. Except Finn, who downed his nail gun, his arctic gaze firmly fixed on her as he strode in her direction.
‘Uh-oh,’ Ethan said out of the corner of his mouth. ‘He doesn’t look too happy.’
Evie couldn’t agree more. She should be apprehensive. But he looked pretty damn sexy, coming at her with all that coiled tension. Like he might just slam her against the nearest wall and take her, like he had their first time.
‘I don’t think happy is in his vocabulary.’
Finn pulled up in front of Ethan—who seriously should know better than to bring a woman into an environment where most of the men hadn’t seen one in weeks—and glared at his friend. Who had clearly gone mad.
‘What is she doing here?’ he demanded.
Ethan held up his hands. ‘Just showing the lady around.’
‘She only needs to know where the clinic is,’ Finn pointed out.
‘Well, apart from common courtesy,’ Ethan murmured, his voice firm, ‘Evie really should know the lie of the land in case of an emergency.’
Finn scowled at his friend’s logic. ‘Now she knows.’ He turned and looked at Evie in her clothes from yesterday, her hair loose. ‘This is no place for a woman,’ he ground out.
Having been in the army for a decade and here for almost five months, Finn knew these men and men just like them. Even hiding away, licking their wounds, sex was always on their mind.
Evie felt her hackles rise. Had she slipped back into the Fifties? She glared at him, her gaze unwavering. ‘You ought to talk,’ she snapped, pleased the background noise kept their conversation from being overheard. ‘What kind of a place is this for a surgeon, Finn? Wielding a nail gun when you should be wielding a scalpel!’
Finn ignored the dig. ‘Get her out of here,’ he said to Ethan.
Finn scowled again as Ethan grinned but breathed a sigh of relief when Evie followed Ethan out, every pair of eyes in the workshop glued to her butt.
His included.
On their next leg, they passed a helipad and a small hangar with a gleaming blue and white chopper sitting idle.
‘Yours?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘Handy piece of transport in the middle of nowhere.’
They drove to a large dam area, which had been the source of the silver perch they’d eaten last night. Above it evenly spaced on a grassy hill sat ten pre-fab dongas.
‘Each one has four bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and common area,’ Ethan explained, as he pulled up under a shady stand of gumtrees near the dam edge and cut the engine. ‘They’re not luxurious but they’re better than anything any of us slept in overseas.’
‘So your capacity is forty?’
‘Actually, it’s forty-five if you count the homestead accommodation,’ Ethan said, dismounting and walking over to inspect the water. ‘That’s over and above you, me, Bob and Finn.’
Evie nodded, also walking over to the water’s edge. The sun was warm on her skin and she raised her face to it for long moments. She could hear the low buzz of insects and the distant whine of a saw.
Ethan waited for a while and said, ‘So … you and Finn …’
Evie opened her eyes and looked at him. ‘What about me and Finn?’
‘You’re … colleagues? Friends …?’
Evie considered Ethan’s question for a while. She didn’t know how to define them with just one word. Colleagues, yes. Lovers, yes. Soon to be parents, yes. But friends …?
She shrugged. ‘It’s … complicated.’
Ethan nodded. ‘He’s a complicated guy.’
Evie snorted at the understatement of the century. ‘You’ve known him for a while?’
Ethan picked up a stone at his feet and skipped it across the surface. ‘We served together overseas.’
‘You know his brother died over there?’
‘I know.’
‘It’s really messed with his head,’ she murmured.
Ethan picked up another stone and looked at it. ‘You love him?’ he asked gently.
Evie swallowed as Ethan followed his direct question with a direct look. She thought about denying it, but after five months of denying it it felt good to say it to someone. ‘Yes.’ She gave a self-deprecating laugh. ‘He’s not exactly easy to love, though, you know? And God knows I’ve tried not to …’
Evie paused. She had a feeling that Ethan knew exactly how hard Finn was to love. ‘I think what happened with his brother really shut him down emotionally,’ she murmured.
She knew she was making another excuse for him but she couldn’t even begin to imagine how awful it would be to hold Bella or Lexi in her arms as they died. The thought of losing her sisters at all was horrifying. But like that?
How did somebody stay normal after that?
How did it not push a person over the edge?
Ethan looked back at the stone in his hand, feeling its weight and its warmth before letting it fly to skim across the surface. ‘Yes, it did. But I think Finn had issues that predated the tragedy with Isaac,’ he said carefully.
Evie snapped to attention. ‘He told you that?’
Ethan snorted. ‘No. This is Finn, remember. He’s always been pretty much a closed book, Evie. At least as long as I’ve known him. And we go back a couple of years before what happened with Isaac. He’s been much, much worse since then but he wasn’t exactly the life of the party before that. Part of it is the things he’d seen, the injuries, the total … mayhem that is war. A person shuts themselves down to protect themselves from that kind of carnage. But I think there’s even more than that with Finn, stuff from his distant past.’
Evie stilled as the enormity of what she faced hit home. If Ethan was right she was dealing with something bigger than his grief. She looked at Ethan helplessly, her hand seeking the precious life that grew inside her, needing to anchor herself in an uncertain sea. ‘I don’t know how to reach him through all that.’
Ethan shrugged. ‘I don’t know how you do it either but I do know that he’s crying out for help and after that little performance in the workshop, I think you’re the one woman who can do it. I have never seen Finn so … emotionally reactive as just now.’
Evie cocked an eyebrow. ‘Is that what you call it?’
He grinned. ‘Don’t give up on him, Evie. I think you’ll make a human being out of him yet.’
Ethan had been right—word had got out. Evie’s clinic was bustling that first morning with the most pathetic ailments she’d ever treated. But it felt good to be able to practise medicine where there was no pressure or stress or life-and-death situations and the men were flirty and charming and took the news of her pretend boyfriend waiting back home for her good-naturedly.
She and Bob had lunch together on the magnificent homestead veranda serenaded by the crash of the surf. She yawned as Bob regaled her with the details of the nail-gun incident.
‘Sorry,’ she apologised with a rueful smile. ‘It must be the sea air.’
Bob took it in his stride. ‘No worries. You should lie down and have a bit of a kip, love. A siesta. Reckon the Italians have that right.’
Evie was awfully tempted. The pregnancy had made her tired to the bone and by the time she arrived home after manic twelve-hour shifts at Sydney Harbour she was utterly exhausted. She already felt like she was in a major sleep deficit—and the baby wasn’t even out yet! She fantasised every day about midday naps and she could barely drag herself out of bed on her days off.
But it didn’t seem right to wander off for a nanny nap in broad daylight—was that even allowed?
‘Go on,’ Bob insisted as she yawned again. ‘There’s nothing for you to do here and you have your pager.’
Evie hesitated for a moment longer then thought, What the hell?
She pulled the suitcase off her bed—it must have been delivered while she’d been working that morning. She’d tasked Bella with the job of packing two weeks’ worth of clothes for her because, as a fashion designer, Evie knew her sister would choose with care. Her youngest sister Lexi, on the other hand, who was thirty-two weeks pregnant and time poor, would have just shoved in the first things that came to hand.
As her head hit the pillow her thoughts turned to Finn, as they always did. Should she tell him, shouldn’t she tell him? When to tell him? Here? Back in Sydney? When would be a good time?
But the lack of answers was even more wearying than the questions and within a minute the sound of the ocean and the pull of exhaustion had sucked her into a deep, deep sleep.
Evie woke with a start three hours later. She looked at the clock. She’d slept for three freaking hours?
She must have been more tired than she’d thought!
She certainly hadn’t felt this rested in a long time. Maybe after two weeks here she’d have caught up on the sleep she needed.
She stretched and stared at the ceiling for a moment or two, her hand finding her belly without conscious thought.
‘Well, baby,’ she said out loud. ‘Should I track your father down and tell him right now or should I wait till we’re back in Sydney and he’s done the op?’
Evie realised she should feel silly, talking to a tiny human being in utero who couldn’t respond, but she’d spent so much time avoiding anything to do with the life inside her that it suddenly seemed like the most natural thing in the world—talking to her baby.
‘Move now if you think I should tell him today.’
Again, quite silly. If she was going to rely on airy-fairy reasoning to inform her critical decisions, it’d probably make more sense to flip a coin.
But then the baby moved. And not some gentle fluttering, is-it-or-isn’t it, maybe-it’s-just-wind kind of movement. It was a kick. A very definite kick. As if the baby was shaping up to play soccer for Australia.
Crap. The baby had spoken.
Twenty minutes later she’d changed into a loose, flowing sundress that she’d never seen before but which fitted her perfectly. Bella had attached a note to say, ‘Designed this especially for you. xxx.’
It was floaty and feminine with shoestring straps—perfect for the beach and the warm September day. And exactly what she needed to face Finn.
Finn couldn’t be found around the homestead but Ethan came out as she was standing at the veranda railing, contemplating the horizon.
‘Good clinic this morning,’ he said.
Evie smiled. ‘I’ve never known a bunch of tough guys see a doctor for such trifling complaints.’ Ethan laughed and she joined him. ‘I don’t suppose you know where Finn might be?’ she asked, when their laughter petered out.
‘I’d try the beach.’ He inclined his head towards the well-worn track that lead to the safety-railed cliff edge and the two hundred and twenty stairs that delivered the intrepid traveller straight onto the beach.
They were not for the faint-hearted …
‘He normally swims everyday around this time.’
‘Am I allowed to go that far away?’ she asked.
Ethan laughed. ‘Of course. It’s not that far. And even though it isn’t a private beach, we kind of consider it as within the property boundaries.’
She smiled. ‘Thanks.’
Halfway down she stood aside to let a buff-looking guy in boardies and a backpack run past, his below-knee prosthesis not seeming to hinder him an iota. He nodded at her as he pounded upwards and she turned to watch him as he scaled the stairs as if they were nothing.
Her gaze drifted all the way up the sheer cliff face to the very top. She was dreading walking back—running just seemed insane.
Her foot hit the warm sand a few minutes later and her gaze scanned the wide arc of yellow, unpatrolled beach for Finn. She couldn’t see him but as she walked closer to the thundering ocean she could see a towel discarded on the sand and she looked out at the water, trying to see a head amongst the continually rolling breakers.
Her heart beat in sync with the ocean as she searched in vain through the wild pounding surf and a hundred disaster scenarios scuttled through her head. She calmed herself with the knowledge that he was a strong swimmer and ignored the ominous power of the surging ocean. Then she spotted his head popping up out of the water. He was quite a distance out but she could see his wet hair was sleek, like a seal’s pelt, and his shoulders were broad and bare.
She sat on the sand next to his towel and waited.
Finn was aware of Evie from the minute she’d set foot on the beach. Some sixth sense had alerted him and he’d watched her advance towards the shoreline, obviously looking for him.
And, of course, she looked utterly gorgeous in a dress that blew across her body, outlining her athletic legs, her hair whipping across her face, the shoestring straps baring lovely collar bones and beautiful shoulders.
Just looking at her made him hard and he was grateful for the cover of ocean.
It had been so long since he’d touched her. He wanted to stride up the beach, push her back into the sand and bury himself in her. But he hated the feelings she roused in him and the loss of control he exhibited when he was with her.
Besides … it would just put them back at square one when he’d tried so hard—and succeeded—at putting distance between them.
He could tell, though, even from this distance, she was here to chat. And, God knew, he didn’t want to chat with her. Right now the only thing he wanted to do with her involved being naked and he was going to stay right here until he’d worn the impulse down.
He swam against and with the strong current until he was chilled to the bone and his arm ached. A part of him hoped she’d get sick of waiting and just leave. Or maybe her pager would go off. But she sat stubbornly staring out to sea, watching him until finally the chill was unbearable and, admitting defeat, he strode from the surf.
She handed him his towel as he drew level with her and he took it wordlessly, rubbing vigorously at his body. When he was done he wrapped it around his waist and threw himself down next to her, taking care to leave a gap. She didn’t say anything to him as they both sat and watched the ocean for a while, the sun’s rays beginning to work their magic on the ice that seemed to penetrate right down to his bones.
Although the ice around his heart was as impenetrable as always.
‘I hear you have a boyfriend,’ he said after a while.
Evie, her brain still grappling with the perfect words to tell Finn he was going to be a father and her stupid pregnant hormones still all aflutter from his sexy Adonis-rising-from-the-ocean display, didn’t register the terseness in his tone.
‘A cosmetic surgeon who owns a Porsche and comes from North Shore money,’ he continued.
Evie bit back a smile at the ill-disguised contempt in his voice. When choosing her fake boyfriend she’d deliberately chosen all the attributes Finn would despise. ‘Well, I figured if I was going to have a make-believe boyfriend I might as well go all out.’
Finn wasn’t mollified. ‘He sounds like a tosser.’
Evie smiled at the ocean. ‘Because he does lips and boobs or because of the Porsche?’
Finn glared at her as she continued to stare at the horizon. ‘Is that what you want, Princess Evie? Some blue-blooded prince to keep up your royal lineage?’
She turned to look at him, her nostrils flaring as the scent of sea salt and something her hormones recognised as quintessentially Finn enveloped her. ‘I think you know who I want.’
And suddenly the roar of the ocean faded as the pounding of her pulse took over. The fact she was supposed to be telling him about their baby also faded as her heart drummed a primitive beat perfectly at home in this deserted windswept landscape. The world of the beach shrank until there was just him and her and the sun stroking warm fingers over their skin, lulling her common sense into a stupor. His bare chest and shoulders teased her peripheral vision, his sexy stubble and wet, ruffled hair taunted her front and centre.
‘I’ve only ever wanted you, Finn,’ she murmured, her breath rough as her gaze fell to his mouth. Wanting to feel it on hers. To feel it everywhere. ‘And right now all I can think about is how good we are together.’
Finn shut his eyes, images of how good they were rolling through his brain as seductively as her voice, like a siren from the sea. He opened them again and her hazel eyes were practically silver with desire. ‘Evie …’
Her breasts grew heavy at the rawness of his voice. Longing snaked through her belly, hot and hard and hungry as she lifted her hand to his face, ran her fingers over his mouth. ‘I’ve wanted to kiss you every day for five months,’ she murmured.
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Amy Andrews
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: The only way Evie Lockheart could say goodbye to Dr Finn Kennedy was by allowing herself to surrender one more time to temptation.Admitting out loud she felt more for the guarded surgeon was never an option. Then a bombshell rocks Evie to her very core. Now she must tell the man whose delectable smile haunts her dreams that this time she will not let him walk away.