Father For Her Newborn Baby

“I do, and I take it a step further, I replace mitral valves, too.”

“But that’s open-heart surgery.”

“Not the way we do it these days. I use the same route as angiograms. TAVR or TAVI—have you heard of that?”

She turned her head toward him, disbelief in her eyes. “You do transcatheter aortic-valve replacements?”

“Also known as trans-catheter aortic-valve implantations. Yes—” he sounded smug and couldn’t help it “—that would be me.”

“Oh, my gosh.” Except it sounded like ohmahgosh. “You’re, like, a star in medicine!” Except it sounded like stah.

“You’ve heard of me?”

“You’re, like, the god of cardiology. I can’t believe I didn’t add that up.” She tapped her hands on her knees. “Wow. I’m working with a genius!”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Oh, I would. You launched a whole new minimally invasive approach to mitral-valve replacement. No major incisions, the heart doesn’t have to be stopped or put on bypass, there’s quicker recovery time. We learned all about that in my fourth-year cardiology module. This is freaking amazing.”

“Hold on, it’s not like I created it. All I did was hear about a great new product, and ask to be trained by the medical-device company. Granted, I was one of the first in the country to do that. Okay, the first.” He tried his best not to look too proud. “You know the old saying with medicine: watch-one-do-one-teach-one. Now I travel the country doing in-services training for other doctors. Spreading the word. Kind of like a TAVR evangelist.” He enjoyed her gushing, but went the humble route anyway. “I’m just a teacher.”

“The procedure sure has changed a lot of lives for the better. It probably doesn’t cost nearly as much as the old way of doing things either.”

“Well, the surgery isn’t for everyone, but, yeah, it has helped a lot of people.”

He pulled into the parking lot, which put an end to the conversation. When they got out of the car, he thought he noticed a fresh blush on her face, and she looked at him differently than when they’d left the ranch. Okay, so now he knew she was the kind of woman who was impressed with what a man could do, not only his appearance, which was a definite plus for him. Yet there was that link to a man’s abilities again, rather than the person. Yeah, but that was all beside the point, because nothing was going to happen between them.