Carol Marinelli - Their Secret Royal Baby

He was bored, he realised. He missed being part of a team and using his brain. His father had suggested an advisory role on the board of Medrindos Hospital and Elias could think of nothing worse.

He uncorked the champagne and it was then that he heard a voice.

‘Celebrating?’

He turned and saw that he did not have the beach to himself—there was a woman sitting beneath a tree with her legs stretched out and her hands behind her as if she was sunbathing beneath the moon.

‘I guess I am,’ Elias said, though he didn’t add that the champagne corks popped at lunchtime every day in his world.

‘And I thought this was my slice of heaven.’

‘I didn’t mean to interrupt,’ he said, smiling at her soft Scottish accent.

‘It’s fine.’

He saw that she had a plastic glass in one hand and he held up the bottle, offering her a drink of champagne. He saw her teeth as now she smiled.

‘I thought you’d never ask.’

He walked over and filled her glass and he could see that she had long curly hair but he could not make out the colour.

‘Cheers!’ she said.

‘Cheers.’

They both took a drink, she from her plastic glass and he from the bottle, and it was pleasant.

‘They sound as if they’re having fun,’ she said, and nodded in the direction of the yacht.

He didn’t tell her that that was where he had just come from, or that he hadn’t been having fun in the least.

‘They do. I’m Elias,’ he introduced himself, but then frowned as he did so—Elias had been said in a woman’s voice that wasn’t his.

‘Elias!’

His eyes snapped open as he realised that it was Mandy who had just invaded the memory of that night. He sat up straight as the door to the on-call room opened and the bright light from outside hit him and that long-ago night was left behind.

Immediately his feet were on the ground. He knew, from the sharp knock at the door and the call of his name, and from the fact that Mandy had come directly to get him, that it was serious.

The reason she hadn’t simply called him to come around was because she had been busy making another urgent call on her way.

As they walked swiftly through the department she brought him up to speed.

‘I’ve got a young woman in premature labour. I’ve just put out an urgent call for the obstetric team but it’s bedlam in Maternity apparently.’

It happened at times.

The obstetric team wasn’t sitting around, drinking coffee and waiting for an urgent call from Accident and Emergency. Last month Elias had delivered a baby boy before they had arrived.

That had been an easy delivery, though, and the baby had been full term.

This one wasn’t.

Chimes started to ring out as Mandy explained further. ‘Mr Evans has deteriorated, I’ve put out an arrest call and Roger is in Resus with a sick child.’

The department had, as it so often did, just got extremely busy.

‘How pregnant is she?’ Elias asked.

‘Twenty-nine weeks. Her waters broke as we got her onto the gurney. Elias, this baby is coming and very rapidly.’

They had reached the cubicle and Elias took a steadying breath. He hadn’t dealt with a premature baby on his own before.

He heard a low moan of pain from behind the curtain.

‘What’s her name?’

Before Mandy could tell Elias he was already stepping into the cubicle.

And before Mandy said the name, he knew it.

‘Beth.’

She was sitting up, wearing a hospital gown, and there was a blanket over her. Her stunning red hair was worn up tonight but it was starting to uncoil and was dark with sweat. Her gorgeous almond-shaped eyes were for now screwed closed and she wore drop earrings in rose gold and the stones were rubies.

They were the same earrings she had worn the night they had met.

He could vividly remember stepping into her villa and turning the light on and watching the woman he had seen only in moonlight come into delicious colour—the deep red of her hair, the pale pink of her lips and eyes that were a pure ocean blue.

Now Valerie had her arm around Beth’s shoulders and was telling her to try not to push.

For Elias there was a moment of uncertainty.

Could Mandy find someone else perhaps? Could he swap with Roger?

Almost immediately he realised there was no choice. Being brought up to speed on Roger’s ill child, and having Roger brought up to speed on Beth, would lose vital minutes for both patients.

They were already stretched to the limit.

And from what Mandy had told him this baby was close to being born.

His baby?

He could not afford to think like that.

‘Beth,’ Valerie said. ‘Dr Santini is here...’

Yet her eyes had already opened and met his and recall was instant for she would remember that night for ever.

Not just the romance and kissing and not just the delicious love they had made.

But that the results of that night had torn her life and her family apart.

CHAPTER TWO

BETH FRANTICALLY SHOOK her head when she opened her eyes and saw that Elias was there but then she saw he was wearing navy scrubs.

Squinting, she read his name badge and it registered that he was the doctor who had been summoned to treat her.

She simply didn’t have the breath to speak yet, but she did not want to see him like this, or for him to find out he was about to become a father like this!

Everything was going wrong.

Rapidly so.

Fifteen minutes ago she had been patting herself on the back for a job well done and about to cross the street from the restaurant she had just left and head for the hotel. Now she stared into the eyes of her one and only one-night stand.

Elias.

All Beth wanted was to go back to the hotel and to wake up in the bed there and declare this a bad dream so she tried to climb from the gurney.

‘I want to go home.’

‘Beth, you need to lie back,’ Valerie said, and held her, but Beth shrugged off the arm and as she did so she lost the gown.

‘I can’t...’ Beth said, and she rattled at the side of the gurney. ‘I want to go back to the hotel. I want...’

Elias caught her hands. He recognised her anguish and knew enough to be sure that it was not simply down to his presence.

She was in a rapid, tumultuous labour and that was a very scary place to be.

‘You’re okay.’

His was the voice of reason and she wondered if he even recognised her, he was so completely calm when everything, everything, was going wrong.

As an events co-ordinator, Beth was here in London for the opening of Mr Costas’s London branch of his renowned restaurant.

He was her top client.

The night had gone beautifully and to plan. The restaurant had been filled mainly with friends and relations of Mr and Mrs Costas. Most had travelled to London for the occasion and, because she had liaised with a lot of the guests for a previous event, the opening night had been easy to organise. The hotel opposite the restaurant was hosting the guests and all had gone well.

It had only been at the very end of the night, as the last of the guests had left, that Beth had suddenly felt terribly warm.

She had been wearing a black light wool dress, sheer black tights and high heels and, despite it being a cold night in early January, she hadn’t put on her coat.

The cold air had been welcome on her burning cheeks and she had taken a moment to gulp it in. She had just started to walk when she’d felt a sharp pain in her back.

It was the high heels, Beth had decided, but the pain had been acute enough to stop her and, even though the pavement was wet, she had bent to take her shoes off.

The pain, though, as she’d bent over, had stretched from her back and wrapped around her stomach like a vice, and Beth had placed a hand over her bump and felt that it was hard and tight.