Pregnant With His Royal Twins

What had just happened? How had he managed to turn her understanding of the world completely on its head?

She slipped her hand into her pocket, to reassure herself that the pregnancy test was still there. Only it wasn’t. Her pocket was empty except for her notebook and pen.

She looked back to the kitchenette and saw Jamie come out, his face a mass of confused emotions as his eyes met hers.

Over the small white stick in his hand.

Chapter Two (#udac77d08-23f5-5be5-8925-71a17a563de4)

IT MUST HAVE fallen from her pocket. But when? And how?

And then she remembered crouching down to get the milk from the fridge. Something similar had happened before, due to the design of the pocket on her uniform. It was below the waist, low down. She’d lost her mobile phone once that way, hearing it clatter onto the floor. She’d not heard the test stick fall. Probably because she’d heard his voice instead. Felt his presence.

‘It is you. Isn’t it?’

His words had cut through everything.

Her mind had been on other things. Other concerns. She’d closed that fridge fast. Stood up quickly and made that tea, trying not to look at him, trying to get away as quickly as she could.

She was saved from going over to him and taking the test from his hands. The call light above Bed Two flashed and she went in to see how Lisa Chambers, her labouring mother there, was doing.

Lisa was pacing the room, her abdomen swollen before her, her hands pressed into her back.

‘I felt the need to push with that last one, Freya.’

She handed the mug of tea over to Lisa’s husband and then guided Lisa back to the bed. ‘I’ll need to check you before you can push.’

She didn’t need Lisa pushing too early. It might cause a swelling of the cervix and make delivery more difficult.

Regaining control of her own body, she checked her patient’s. ‘You’re right, Lisa. You’re ten centimetres. You can push with the next contraction.’

Lisa got up off the bed. ‘I can’t lie down, though.’

‘That’s fine. Let your body lead you and I’ll help. Just tell me when you’re ready.’

Lisa beckoned to her husband to stand on the other side of the bed and take her hands. Then she squatted on the other side.

‘When the contraction comes, take a big, deep breath, Lisa—chin to your chest and push, right into your bottom.’

Lisa nodded, waiting, then closed her eyes and sucked in that breath.

Freya quickly washed her hands, dried them and gloved up. Lisa might be five times a mother, but this was her first vaginal delivery. It might take some time and, with the best will in the world and not wanting to prolong her patient’s suffering, she hoped that it would.

Because she herself needed some time before she could leave this room. Needed to think of what she would say. What she would do. How she could escape this situation she’d found herself in.

Lisa was an excellent patient, though, and obviously keen to see her fifth child. Because within forty-five minutes of her first needing to push, her son slithered into Freya’s waiting hands.

She passed the baby to his sobbing mother, clamped and cut the cord, then helped Lisa into bed and wrapped a towel around her son to help keep him warm.

The baby cried—bursts of pure sound, a completely new person announcing his arrival. Freya smiled at the newly created family of seven and quietly gave Lisa the injection of syntocinon that would hasten delivery of the placenta, as per her patient’s request.

It seemed to take no time at all to deliver it, check it, assess the baby’s APGAR score, then Lisa’s, and realise that Lisa hadn’t torn at all. Her five-pound, twelve-ounce son had arrived perfectly.

There was no reason for Freya to stay at all. She prided herself on leaving her families to have some private time as soon as she could after the birth. So they could welcome and get to know their new baby on their own. But tonight she hesitated by the door.

‘Congratulations, you two.’

‘Thanks, Freya. I couldn’t have done it without you.’

‘Nonsense. You were a model patient.’ She smiled, trying to pluck up the courage to go out there and face him. That conversation.

She could only hope and pray that he was busy with a patient of his own.

But she had no such luck.

Jamie was just walking back to the hub desk, sliding his pen into his top pocket. His dark eyes instantly met hers. Challenged her. Demanded an explanation.

She almost faltered. But she had Lisa’s notes to finish writing up, and when that was done she needed to check on Andrea. She’d taken her off the trace a while ago and she’d been steadily contracting every five minutes the last time she’d seen her.

Jamie stood still as she walked past him, and she hoped he wouldn’t see that her nerves were making her hands tremble and shake as she sat down at the desk.

‘It’s not what you think.’ She glanced up at him, then away again. Dammit. He was just as handsome as she remembered. Even more so, this close. He was hauntingly beautiful.

Jamie sat down in the chair next to her. ‘What do I think?’

She paused, her pen over Lisa’s notes. ‘It belongs to a patient.’

‘A patient?’

‘Yes. I must have put it in my pocket without realising and—’

‘We don’t do pregnancy testing here. Mona was quite clear when she showed me around that the fertility clinic is in a whole other ward next to this one.’

She tried her hardest not to look at him. Not to meet the searing gaze that she knew would instantly divine the truth. If her cheeks could have flamed red, then they would.

She looked at him, guilt filling her eyes.

He gazed at her for a moment, his face deadly serious. ‘Tell me the truth. It’s yours?’

Her eyes closed, almost as if the admission would cause her pain. ‘Yes...’ A whisper.

‘Am I...?’

The words choked in his throat and she opened her eyes again in anguish. She hardly knew this man. He was a temp. A locum. A drifter. How could she tell this stranger that the baby in her womb was most definitely his? Because she didn’t sleep around. She never met anyone—never gave herself the chance to.

She didn’t need to get that kind of close to any man, to develop feelings for any man, because look at what had happened to her when she did. She’d suffered more than she’d ever believed it was possible for one body to suffer after getting involved with Mike. The pain she’d gone through, both emotionally and physically, had almost destroyed her.

She never wanted that again. Never wanted to risk it. Having that one night with Jamie—a stranger—had been a moment in which she’d thrown caution to the wind, feeling herself so physically attracted to the pirate she’d met at the ball that she’d decided she would risk it. Keeping her anonymity, she would never have to deal with him afterwards.