Two Doctors and A Baby

Beside the bathroom was a spare bedroom that she’d set up as a home office. Two walls were covered in bookshelves made of pale wood and neatly filled with yet more medical texts and journals. Her desk, also in pale wood, was just as ruthlessly organized—with pens, pencils and highlighters neatly lined up in distinctly separate containers.

The Twilight Zone theme started to play quietly in his head. There were no real personal touches anywhere. No indication of her interests or hobbies or insights into her personality, and if he didn’t know better, he’d think her career was the sum total of who she was.

But he did know better. He’d kissed her and touched her, and she’d responded with a passion that had taken his breath away. She’d wrapped herself around him as he’d thrust into her body, shuddering and sighing and completely coming undone. Yeah, there was a lot more to Avery than the impersonal and sterile environment of her home indicated.

A spot of green caught the corner of his eye, and he smiled when he noted the stubby plant on the windowsill, recognizing it as some kind of cactus. Even her plant carried the same hands-off vibe that she did. Except that beneath her prickly exterior, she was warm and soft and shockingly uninhibited.

The challenge, of course, was getting past that exterior, and Justin suspected that scaling her walls once would only make a subsequent breach that much more difficult. He also realized he didn’t want to breach her defenses—he wanted to tear them down completely.

He turned away from the cactus in the window to return to the kitchen. That was when he saw it. Another bookcase tucked into an alcove beside the door. He moved in for a closer inspection. The books here were mostly classical literature and popular fiction, with some surprisingly racy titles in the mix, all of them arranged alphabetically by author.

On top of the bookshelf was a framed photograph—the only one he’d seen in the whole apartment—of a little boy and a little girl. The picture had been snapped from behind as the two children walked, hand in hand, away from whoever was in possession of the camera and toward the iconic castle at Disney World. He instinctively knew the children were Avery and her brother, Ryder, even before he looked closely enough to see their names embroidered on the matching Mickey Mouse ears they wore.

It was a snapshot of her childhood, a brief glimpse of a happy moment somehow made more poignant by the realization that she couldn’t have been more than eight years old in the photo and there were no other, later pictures to be found anywhere else in her apartment—or at least in any of the rooms he’d visited so far.

“What are you doing in here?” Avery demanded.

He glanced over, his heart doing a slow roll inside his chest when he saw her standing in the doorway, looking so naturally beautiful and sexy. Her face was scrubbed free of makeup, her hair had been released from its habitual ponytail and skimmed her shoulders. She’d dressed in a pair of black yoga pants and a long, fuzzy V-neck sweater in a pretty shade of blue that almost exactly matched her eyes. Her feet were bare, her toenails painted a bold crimson color that seemed out of character for her but which he knew was not.

“I was looking for you,” he finally answered her question.

She arched a brow. “You didn’t trust I’d find my way back to the kitchen?”

“No, I meant I was looking for a glimpse of you somewhere—anywhere—in this sterile apartment.”

She didn’t blink at his criticism. Nor had he expected her to. It wouldn’t be nearly as much fun to ruffle her feathers if they ruffled easily.

“Remind me not to give you the name of my decorator,” she responded lightly.

“I didn’t think the white was your choice.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked, in a deliberate change of topic.

“I think I did.” He held up the photo.

She took the frame from his hand and carefully set it back into place on the bookshelf. “Dinner will be ready in—” she glanced at the watch on her wrist “—six and a half minutes.”

He smiled. “Precisely six and a half? Not six or seven but six and a half?”

“The pasta takes twelve minutes to cook and I dropped it into the pot approximately five and a half minutes ago.”

“What would happen if you forgot to put the timer on and cooked it for—” he gasped dramatically “—thirteen minutes?”

“Then we’d have to eat overcooked spaghetti,” she said matter-of-factly, but she frowned at the prospect.

He shook his head. “Where did you go to medical school?”

She seemed startled by the abrupt change of topic but, after a brief hesitation, she responded, “Harvard.”

“Figures.”

“I actually wanted to go to Stanford, but my parents thought Harvard was more prestigious.”

“I bet you graduated summa cum laude, too, didn’t you?”

“So? I worked hard and studied hard.”

“I’m sure you did,” he agreed. “And I have no doubt you’re a better doctor because of it. But sometimes, instead of blasting a tunnel through a mountain, you should climb to the top and enjoy the view.”

“If you have a point, I’m not seeing it,” she told him.

“My point is that you’re obviously dedicated, focused and driven, and those are great attributes in the practice of medicine. But when they carry over into your personal life, it suggests that something happened that compels you to rigidly and ruthlessly control every aspect of your life.”

“You’re reading an awful lot into the fact that I use a kitchen timer when I cook my pasta.”

“It’s not just the pasta,” he told her. “You have your highlighters aligned in the spectrum of the rainbow.”

“I didn’t realize being organized was a character flaw.”

“I’m the same way when it comes to every examination and procedure I perform in the ER,” he admitted. “But when I walk out of the hospital at the end of my shift, I let that go and relax.”

“Good for you.”

“You should let go a little, too,” he suggested. “You’re wound up like a torsion spring and one of these days, all of the energy trapped inside of you is going to let loose. Or maybe that is what happened in the supply closet.”

“That’s a better explanation than anything I could come up with,” she acknowledged. “And maybe, after more than two years, it was time to let loose a little.”

His brows lifted. “Are you telling me that it was more than two years since you’d had sex?”

“I’m sure it’s not some kind of celibacy record.”

“Sorry, it’s just that—wow. Two years.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine.”

She rolled her eyes. “We both know you can’t imagine—that’s why I wanted the test.”

Chapter Five

“Right. The test.”

For a few minutes, Justin had forgotten the reason he was here—the only reason Avery was making dinner for him.

As if on cue, a buzzer sounded from the kitchen.

“That’s the pasta,” she said, automatically turning away.

He caught her hand, halting her before she reached the door. She glanced over her shoulder, a quizzical expression on her face.

“I just wanted to say thanks—for offering to cook for me tonight.”

“You’re welcome,” she said cautiously.

“I know that you don’t really approve of me—”

“And I know you aren’t really concerned about my approval.”

He lifted a shoulder. “But you should know that only about half of the rumors that circulate around the hospital are true.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.

“And while I can’t control what other people say, I don’t kiss and tell. Ever.”

“I know,” she admitted.

The timer in the kitchen buzzed again.

“I really need to get that pasta off the stove.”

But he still didn’t release her hand and there was a mischievous glint in his eyes that made her uneasy.

“The noodles are going to be overcooked,” she said again, and that was when she realized what he was doing. “You’re stalling me on purpose.”

“Why would I do that?” he asked innocently.

“To wind up my torsion spring.”

“People don’t actually have torsion springs—I only said you were like a torsion spring.”

“If you don’t let me get back to the kitchen right now, I’m going to let loose all of my tension in your direction.”

He grinned. “Promises, promises.”

But this time when she turned away, he let her go.

She had a colander in the sink and a distinctly unhappy look on her face when he returned to the kitchen. She dumped the noodles into the bowl and carried them to the table she must have set when she got out of the shower.

“If dinner is ruined, it’s your fault,” she told him.

“Dinner is not ruined,” he promised, retrieving the salad from the fridge.

But she still looked skeptical as she scooped penne out of the serving bowl and into her pasta bowl. She ladled sauce on the top and waited until he had done the same before she picked up her fork.

“Did your mother teach you how to cook?” he asked, after he’d sampled his first mouthful.

She shook her head. “My mother is a senior research supervisor at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta—she can isolate a pathogen but I doubt she knows how to pound or purée.”

“So who taught you how to cook?”

“I took a few recreational cooking classes at a small culinary institute in Boston while I was doing my residency.”

“Did you graduate with top honors from there, too?”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t for grades, it was for fun.”

“For fun?” he asked skeptically.

Her lips curved, just a little. “It was more fun than starving.”

“Well, your pasta gets top marks from me,” he told her.

“The sauce was good,” she allowed. “The noodles were overcooked.”

“Maybe by about thirty seconds,” he acknowledged, smiling at her.

She smiled back, a wordless acceptance of the truce he’d offered. “Okay, maybe I could learn to relax a little bit.”

“I’d be happy to teach you.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to be that relaxed.”

He chuckled, unoffended.

“I didn’t make anything for dessert, but I do have ice cream,” she told him.

“I don’t think I have room for dessert—even ice cream,” he told her.

“It’s cookies ’n’ cream,” she said, in a tone that suggested no one could refuse her favorite flavor.

But he shook his head. “No, thanks.”

When she started to stack the dishes, he pulled the lab report out of his pocket and slid it across the table to her.

Avery’s heart pounded as she unfolded the page.

Her eyes skimmed the document quickly the first time, then again, more slowly. She’d been right. Just as she’d suspected, his results were all clear.

She exhaled a grateful sigh. There was nothing to worry about. But she’d needed to be sure—just in case there were other repercussions from that night.

“That’s it, then,” she said, almost giddy with relief as she pushed away from the table to help clear it. “There’s no need for either of us to ever again mention what happened on New Year’s Eve.”

He leaned back against the counter, holding her gaze for a long moment before he finally asked, “Are you sure about that?”

She hugged the salad dressing bottles she carried closer to her chest and eyed him warily.

“There are other potential consequences of unprotected sex,” he reminded her.

She nibbled on her lower lip, as if she didn’t know where he was going with the conversation. Because she hadn’t expected him to go there, she hadn’t expected the possibility to cross his mind. And maybe it hadn’t. “What do you mean?”

He continued to hold her gaze, his own unwavering. “I mean a baby,” he told her. “Is it possible you could be pregnant?”

She shook her head as she turned away from him to put the dressings back in the fridge. “I don’t think so.”

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