Susan Crosby - Prescription for Romance / Love and the Single Dad

PRESCRIPTION FOR ROMANCE

MARIE FERRARELLA

LOVE AND THE SINGLE DAD

SUSAN CROSBY

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PRESCRIPTION FOR ROMANCE

MARIE FERRARELLA

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA ®Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLAhas written almost two hundred novels, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

Dear Reader,

I love babies. I always have, always will. Unlike a lot of my friends, I had absolutely no trouble getting pregnant. I also know, much to the embarrassment of my children, exactly when each of them was conceived.

Since holding my newborns in my arms and being a mom is something I cannot imagine not being part of my life, I can completely understand how the Armstrong Fertility Institute could be perceived as a beacon of hope to childless couples. This is the first book in a six-book series about the Institute and the people who are a part of helping to make the miracle of birth happen for couples desperate to have a baby. But, along with the miracles come secrets and intrigue … I hope that this book and the books that follow will entertain you.

Thank you for reading, and, as ever, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

Wishing you all the best,

Marie Ferrarella

To

Jessica and Nicholas

with all my love forever,

Mom

Dr. Paul Armstrong was deeply concerned.

His sister Olivia Armstrong Mallory could have never, by any stretch of the imagination, been described as robust or even glowingly healthy, but she sat in his office today, turning to him not just as her older brother, but as the chief of staff of the Armstrong Fertility Institute. He knew talking about this wasn’t easy for his sister. She’d addressed half her story to the crumpled tissue she held in a death grip between her fingers in her lap.

How many times since he’d begun to work here had he heard this same story before? Too many times, and yet, not enough to become insensitive to it.

Olivia wanted to become pregnant and all her attempts, she had confided quietly, had thus far failed.

Even as he listened to her haltingly pour out her heart, Paul began to suspect that there was more to all this than she was telling him. Something beyond the hunger to have a child.

“Olivia,” he pointed out gently, “you’re being too hard on yourself. You’re just twenty-nine—”

Eyes full of misery and unshed tears looked up at him. “And I’ve been trying to get pregnant for five years, Paul. Five very long, disappointing years.”

This, too, he’d seen over and over again. The anguished faces of frustrated women, pleading for help, asking him to make the most natural of dreams come true for them. He’d never imagined he’d see this look on the face of one of his sisters.

“Olivia, there are other avenues. You could adopt a child,” he tactfully suggested.

But he could see, even as he said it, that for Olivia, this wasn’t the solution. She pressed a small, fisted hand beneath her breast, pushing against her incredibly flat belly. “I want to feel life growing inside me, Paul.”

Though his heart went out to her, Paul felt bound to tell her what he told every woman or couple who came in to see him with this same dilemma. “It isn’t all roses, Livy. There’s a very real downside to being pregnant.” Assuming, he added silently, that he could even get her there.

Olivia shook her head, her sleek black hair shadowing the adamant movement. “Don’t you understand I don’t care?” Reaching across the desk that separated them, his sister took his hands in hers in supplication. “I really want to be pregnant. Help me, Paul. Whatever it takes, help me.”

The force of her words had him wondering again. He had to ask. “Olivia, is everything all right?”

Releasing his hands, his sister drew herself up in her chair as she squared her shoulders. “Everything’s fine, Paul.”

Her words only reinforced his concern. “You said that much too fast.”

Olivia inclined her head. “All right, I’ll say it slower. Every-thing’s-fine.” She deliberately drew out the sentence, saying it in slow motion and awarding it a host of syllables.

He would have laughed if he wasn’t so concerned. “Livy, I’m your brother. You can talk to me.”

“I am talking to you,” she insisted. “I’m telling you that I want to have a baby. As the chief of staff you should be able to understand that.” Blowing out a breath and clearly struggling not to cry, Olivia asked, “Now, can you help me?”

Though he had a tendency to be oblivious to the obvious at times, the irony of the situation did not escape Paul. The daughter of the famous fertility expert Dr. Gerald Armstrong was infertile. Somewhere, the gods were chuckling.

If he ever helped anyone at all, Paul thought, he should be able to help his sister.

“Yes,” he answered gently, “I think there’s a good chance that I can.” Of late, there had been a number of allegations of wrongdoing, rumored to be made by a former disgruntled employee, of eggs and sperm being switched, research that was held suspect and too many multiple births, all of which had caused a cloud of suspicion to be cast over the institute and the work they’d done over the years. Paul had been going out of his way to try to right all of this. He began by luring the world-famous Bonner-Demetrios research team away from a prominent San Francisco teaching hospital and getting them to head up the institute’s research operations here.

Just in time, he thought, looking at his sister.

“We’ve just scored a coup and managed to get two top-flight physicians to join our staff here. Both of them have been on the cutting edge of fertility research for some time now. I’m going to refer you to one of them.”

Olivia nodded, desperately trying to draw hope from her brother’s words. “What’s his name?”

“Dr. Chance Demetrios. If there’s any way possible for you to wind up getting morning sickness, he’ll find it,” Paul promised with a quick smile. Paul wrote a few words on a pad, then tore the page off and held it out to her. “I know he doesn’t have patients today until later. Are you willing to go now?”

Olivia looked down at the slip of paper her brother had given her, unable to read a single word. She sincerely hoped that another doctor would have no trouble deciphering the hieroglyphics. “Are you sure he can see me?”

Paul smiled the shy, boyish smile she remembered so well from their childhood, the smile she recalled gracing the lips of her protector. Derek, their other brother, was always the one in the foreground, gregarious, loud and charming. But it was Paul she always felt she could count on. Paul was the dependable one who spoke little, but meant every word he said.