Needed: Full-Time Father (Medical Romance) Read online

  ‘It’s the tablets.’ Guy gave a relieved laugh and sat back down on the bed, his hands pulling apart her tense ones and holding them tight. ‘You won’t feel like this for long, I promise…’

  ‘It isn’t the tablets,’ Madison gulped, ‘because I didn’t take any.’

  ‘Why?’

  She could feel his eyes burning into the top of her head but she didn’t dare look up. ‘I wasn’t sure if they were teratogenic…’

  ‘Teratogenic?’ Guy’s voice was hoarse.

  ‘If the tablets would have any unwanted side effects on the baby—’

  ‘I know what teratogenic means,’ Guy broke in. ‘It’s the baby bit I don’t know about. How long have you known?’

  ‘About half an hour,’ Madison said. ‘I’ve felt a bit sick for a couple of days and I’m a bit overdue. Before I took anything, I thought it better to check.’ Fumbling in her bedside table, she pulled out a plastic pregnancy testing strip and handed it to him. ‘It’s terrible timing, what with the hospital and everything. I didn’t plan…’

  ‘Hey, you sacked your life coach.’ Guy smiled, staring at the plastic. ‘You’ve stopped making plans, remember?’ His eyes found hers. ‘You’ve started living.’

  ‘But even so!’ A wobble of excitement grew inside her as his smile widened. He wrapped her in his arms and hushed her fears.

  ‘We’re having a baby!’ Guy whispered over and over until finally Madison started to really believe it. Booked flights and ruined schedules didn’t matter a scrap. The magnitude of what was happening finally started to hit and later, when he’d loved her all over again, when she was lying in his arms, feeling totally at one with the world, she said what was on both of their minds.

  ‘I wish Gerard could have known.’

  ‘He knows,’ Guy said softly. ‘That’s why you two were so close, that’s why he watched out for you—he knew that one day you were going to have his grandchild.’

  ‘Maybe he did,’ Madison mused. ‘Not consciously, of course, but somewhere deep inside maybe he felt a connection.’

  ‘A connection!’ Laughing, propping himself on his elbow, Guy smiled down at her. ‘You’ll be lighting incense next and telling me you want a natural water birth.’

  ‘Not likely.’ Madison grimaced then dug him in the ribs. ‘Thanks for reminding me, I’d forgotten all about that part. I’m having every drug on the trolley.’

  ‘What happened to the straight-laced, terribly rigid Madison Walsh I first met?’

  ‘She got lucky.’ Madison smiled. ‘And then she got happy.’

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-5850-4

  NEEDED: FULL-TIME FATHER

  First North American Publication 2005

  Copyright © 2006 by The SAL Marinelli Family Trust

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