A Baby for Eve

A Baby for Eve
Maggie Kingsley

Enter into the world of high-flying Doctors as they navigate the pressures of modern medicine and find escape, passion, comfort and love – in each other’s arms!Her baby dream come true?Nurse Eve Dwyer hasn’t set eyes on Dr Tom Cornish in twenty years. Why has he come back to Penhally Bay now, after she’s built a life for herself and lived through her pain for the baby they never had and Tom never knew about? Because he wants Eve. After a lifetime of running, he’s finally realised he’ll never love anyone more.But the flood waters are rising in Penhally, and Tom is called to head a rescue. He has little opportunity to make amends with Eve. Is it too late, or is there still a chance for them to have the happiness and family they both deserve so much?BRIDES OF PENHALLY BAY Bachelor doctors become husbands and fathers – in a place where hearts are made whole.

Welcome to Penhally Bay!

Nestled on the rugged Cornish coast is the picturesque town of Penhally. With sandy beaches, breathtaking landscapes and a warm, bustling community—it is the lucky tourist who stumbles upon this little haven.

But now Mills & Boon

Medical™ Romance is giving readers the unique opportunity to visit this fictional coastal town through our brand-new twelve-book continuity… You are welcomed to a town where the fishing boats bob up and down in the bay, surfers wait expectantly for the waves, friendly faces line the cobbled streets and romance flutters on the Cornish sea breeze…

We introduce you to Penhally Bay Surgery, where you can meet the team led by caring and commanding Dr Nick Tremayne. Each book will bring you an emotional, tempting romance—from Mediterranean heroes to a sheikh with a guarded heart. There’s royal scandal that leads to marriage for a baby’s sake, and handsome playboys are tamed by their blushing brides! Top-notch city surgeons win adoring smiles from the community, and little miracle babies will warm your hearts. But that’s not all…

With Penhally Bay you get double the reading pleasure… as each book also follows the life of damaged hero Dr Nick Tremayne. His story will pierce your heart—a tale of lost love and the torment of forbidden romance. Dr Nick’s unquestionable, unrelenting skill would leave any patient happy in the knowledge that she’s in safe hands, and is a testament to the ability and dedication of all the staff at Penhally Bay Surgery. Come in and meet them for yourself…

Maggie Kingsley says she can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to be a writer, but she put her dream on hold and decided to ‘be sensible’ and become a teacher instead. Five years at the chalk face was enough to convince her she wasn’t cut out for it, and she ‘escaped’ to work for a major charity. Unfortunately—or fortunately!—a back injury ended her career, and when she and her family moved to a remote cottage in the north of Scotland it was her family who nagged her into attempting to make her dream a reality. Combining a love of romantic fiction with a knowledge of medicine gleaned from the many professionals in her family, Maggie says she can’t now imagine ever being able to have so much fun legally doing anything else!

Recent titles by the same author:

A WIFE WORTH WAITING FOR

THE CONSULTANT’S ITALIAN KNIGHT

A CONSULTANT CLAIMS HIS BRIDE

THE GOOD FATHER

Dear Reader

When my editor phoned to ask if I’d like to take part in an exciting new Medical™ Romance series called Brides of Penhally Bay, I said, ‘Ummm…who, or what, is Penhally?’ The minute she told me about the fictitious Cornish town I was interested. Then, when she told me the names of the other authors who would be taking part, I was hooked. But it was when she told me in what way she’d like me to contribute I knew I would never be able to say no.

There was Tom Cornish, for a start. On the surface this man has it all. Good-looks, a high-powered job as head of operations at the worldwide rescue team of Deltaron, and the complete dedication of his team. But does Tom really have it all? And what about Eve? She and Tom haven’t seen each other in twenty years, and she’s now a dedicated, responsible nurse, a pillar of the community. But she has a secret. A secret which will rock Tom on his heels and change both his and Eve’s life for ever.

I confess I grew to love both these characters. They got into my head, and into my heart, and when I finally said goodbye to them it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. They’d become friends. People I’d both laughed with and cried with. People I desperately wanted to help. And one of the joys for me as a writer has been that all the writers who contributed to the series had the same aim. We all wanted to create something really special to commemorate Mills & Boon’s one hundredth birthday. I think we succeeded with the Penhally series, and I hope you do, too!

Best wishes

Maggie

A BABY FOR EVE

BY

MAGGIE KINGSLEY

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE

A WRY smile curved Eve Dwyer’s lips as the door of St Mark’s Church creaked open then closed again. Somebody was cutting it fine. Very fine. Another five minutes and the wedding ceremony would have begun, and curiously she glanced over her shoulder to see who the latecomer might be only for the smile on her face to freeze.

It was him. His thick black hair might be lightly flecked with grey now, and there were deep lines on his forehead that hadn’t been there twenty years ago, but Eve would have recognised the man walking rapidly towards an empty seat near the front of the church anywhere. Tom Cornish was back in Penhally Bay and, if she hadn’t been sitting in the middle of a packed pew, surrounded by her colleagues from the village’s medical practice, Eve would have taken to her heels and run.

‘Good heavens,’ Kate Althorp, the village’s senior midwife, whispered from Eve’s left. ‘Is that who I think it is?’

Other people were muttering the same thing, Eve noticed, seeing the number of heads suddenly craning in Tom’s direction, the nudges people were giving their neighbours. Not the younger members of the congregation. They wouldn’t remember a Dr Tom Cornish but those aged over forty-five certainly did, and not very kindly if the frowns on some faces were anything to go by.

‘Is that who?’ Lauren Nightingale asked from Eve’s right, but Kate didn’t have time to answer the physiotherapist.

The organist had launched into the wedding march, which meant the bride had arrived. A bride Tom Cornish wouldn’t have known from a cake of soap, Eve thought, gripping her order of service card so tightly that the embossed card bent beneath her fingers. Both Alison Myers and her bridegroom, Jack Tremayne, would have been children when Tom had last been in Penhally Bay so why was he here, and why had he come back when he’d always sworn he never would?

‘Doesn’t Alison look lovely?’ Lauren sighed as the girl walked past them, radiant in a simple long gown of cream satin.

Alison did, but any enjoyment Eve might have felt in the occasion had gone. The flowers in the church, which had smelt so sweet just a few minutes ago, now seemed cloying. The crush of bodies, which had once felt so companionable, now simply felt oppressive, and even the sight of Jack and Alison’s small sons, walking solemnly down the aisle behind Alison, failed to give her pleasure.

‘Eve, are you OK?’

Kate was gazing curiously at her, and Eve faked a smile.

‘I’m fine,’ she murmured. ‘It’s just a bit…crowded.’

The midwife chuckled. ‘Penhally loves a wedding. A christening’s good, but a wedding is the only thing guaranteed to get the whole village out.’

But not Tom Cornish, Eve thought, stiffening slightly as she saw him half turn in his seat. Tom who had once said marriage was a prison he had no intention of ever inhabiting. Tom who’d said he wanted to be free, to travel, and was damned if he was going to rot away in the village in which he had been born.

‘Oh, aren’t they sweet?’ Lauren exclaimed as Alison’s three-year-old son, Sam, and Jack’s equally young son, Freddie, held out the red velvet cushions they were carrying so everyone could see the wedding rings sitting on them.

‘Yes,’ was all Eve could manage as a collective sigh of approval ran round the congregation.

Why was Tom here—why? She’d read in a medical magazine a few years back that he’d been appointed head of operations at Deltaron, the world-famous international rescue team, so he should have been somewhere abroad, helping the victims of some disaster, not sitting in the front pew of St Mark’s, resurrecting all her old heartache, and anger, and pain.

‘Eve, are you quite sure you’re OK?’ Kate whispered, the worry in her eyes rekindling.

‘I…I have a bit of a headache, that’s all,’ Eve lied. ‘It’s the flowers—the perfume—strong smells always give me a headache.’

Kate looked partially convinced. Not wholly convinced, but at least partially, and Eve gripped her order of service card even tighter.

Pull yourself together, she told herself as the service continued and she found her eyes continually straying away from the young couple standing in front of Reverend Kenner towards Tom. For God’s sake, you’re forty-two years old, not a girl any more. Tom probably won’t even remember you, far less recognise you, so pull yourself together, but she couldn’t. No matter how often she told herself she was being stupid, overreacting, all she wanted was to leave. Immediately.

‘Eve, you look terrible,’ Kate murmured when Jack and Alison had walked back down the aisle as man and wife, and everyone in the congregation began to get to their feet. ‘I have some paracetamol in my bag—’

‘Air,’ Eve muttered. ‘I just… I need some fresh air.’

And to get as far away from here as I can before Tom sees me, she added mentally as she hurried to the church door and out into the sunshine. She wasn’t tall—just five feet five—so, if she was quick, she could lose herself amongst the congregation, then hurry down Harbour Road and go home. She’d tell everyone at the practice on Monday she’d had a migraine, and her colleagues would understand, she knew they would. All she had to do was keep walking, not look back, and—

‘Eve Dwyer. By all that’s wonderful, it’s you, isn’t it?’

His voice hadn’t changed at all, Eve thought as she came to a halt, moistening lips that had suddenly gone dry. It was as deep and mellow as it had always been, still with that faint trace of Cornish burr, and she wanted to pretend she hadn’t heard him, but she couldn’t.