Meredith Webber - The Spanish Doctor's Convenient Bride

And how come she’d noticed that much? She who looked on men as necessary adjuncts to the continuation of the species and, at best, useful friends who could reach the highest shelves in the supermarket or lift things down from on top of cupboards?

She shook her head as the espresso machine delivered its final drops into the two small cups, took a deep breath and turned back to find the man studying the photos of some of Gib’s patients that adorned the walls of his office.

‘You call these before and after photos?’ he said, turning as she put the coffee cups on the low table. ‘I have never done much neonatology. It is amazing to think these small babies can grow into such sturdy children and healthy-looking teenagers.’

‘They get the best possible start in this NICU,’ Marty told him. ‘With Emmaline—I’m sorry, with your baby we weren’t sure how premature she was, but her birth weight was 1500 grams, which put her into low birth weight category. So she’d have gone there rather than the other nursery anyway. In the NICU she can be watched every minute of the day in case any of the things that beset premmie babies crops up.’

Had he noticed her slip?

He didn’t mention it, settling himself in a chair near the table and spooning sugar into his coffee.

‘Emmaline?’ Dark eyebrows rose as he said the word and Marty squirmed with embarrassment.

‘I know it’s silly, but I’ve kind of known her, you see, right from when Natalie was admitted. I was called to consult in A and E when she was brought in after the accident, and then when the decision was made to keep her on life support for the baby’s sake, I was the obstetrician in charge—but Gib’s already told you that part. The hospital couldn’t track down any relatives, which meant Natalie had no visitors so there was no one to talk to the baby. I used to visit, and talk to it, and play music—’

‘Mozart?’

So he had heard her conversation. She really should learn to argue more quietly. But playing Mozart had been little enough to do for the baby and the brain-dead woman who had been carrying her, so she tilted her chin and defended her actions.

‘Did you know a researcher once had a group of adolescents take a test, then played some Mozart for them, then had them take a parallel test and every one of them did better? I don’t know if it made any difference to the baby, or to Natalie, but it’s beautiful music. I love Bach—probably more than Mozart—but I thought he might be too complex for the baby, so stuck with a lot of the piano concertos—’

She stopped abruptly as embarrassment coiled and writhed like something alive inside her.

‘Of course, my musical tastes are nothing to do with what you want to know, which was—’

Marty had no idea where the conversation had begun, so she picked up her coffee and took a gulp. Quite dreadful—she’d forgotten to put sugar in, or was too muddled to have given it a thought.

‘Emmaline,’ he repeated, and she felt embarrassment heat her body as she remembered.

‘I didn’t name her right away. I called her “the baby” or just “baby” when I visited for the four weeks Natalie was in the ICU, but then, when I delivered her, she was a tiny scrap of humanity with this wealth of black hair.’ She smiled. ‘I’d had a doll with hair like that when I was young and she was Emmaline, so the name just sort of stuck.’

‘Emmaline Quintero!’ He spoke as if tasting the name on his tongue, and Marty, wondering if there was a word that would convey the ultimate in mortification—mortifiedest?—rushed into speech again.

‘You don’t have to call her Emmaline, of course you don’t. You’ll have your own name for her, a family name maybe—your mother’s name—a favourite, or you could call her after Natalie.’

Big mistake! The man’s face became a mask of nothingness, all expression wiped away—black eyes boring into Marty’s, lips thinned and tight as he said coldly, ‘I think not.’

Do not apologise, Marty’s inner voice ordered, but she was beyond help from within and had already rushed into a confused bout of ‘sorrys’.

‘The decision to keep Natalie on life support? That was yours?’

Thankfully, Carlos’s question cut across her stumbling apologies and Marty was able to grasp the lifeline of a purely medical question.

Although why was he questioning the decision?

Refusing to think about the implications of that one, Marty explained.

‘Actually, in the absence of any relative that we could contact, the hospital ethics committee made the decision. They went on the advice of the neonatologist—Sophie was the one consulted at the time—and my judgement of the stage of the pregnancy. It was deemed advisable, for the baby’s sake—’

‘What was that judgement?’

Marty was prepared to accept his interruption—after all, the man had stuff he wanted to know—but the cold, hard voice in which he interrupted—she didn’t like that one little bit.

‘My judgement of the stage of pregnancy?’ she queried, her voice as cold and hard as his—all compassion gone. Two could play this game. ‘I measured fundal height, and used ultrasound to estimate the length of the baby and head circumference. But although these measurements are fairly close in the first and second trimester, by the third, beginning at twenty-eight weeks—’

Too much information now—he’d know all this medical detail—but he didn’t interrupt so she kept going.

‘They can be out by as much as three weeks, and that’s plus or minus. The man who was in the car gave no help apart to say she was pregnant when she moved in with him so the closest we could get was twenty-eight to thirty-one weeks. Natalie was tall and slim so it was also possible the pregnancy could have been further along than that—a possibility that became a probability when Em—the baby—was delivered.’

‘Dios! Call the baby Emmaline if you wish. Anything is better than this stumbling every time she’s mentioned.’ He glared at Marty, as if defying her to disobey his order, then demanded, ‘So, if anything, Natalie was further into her pregnancy than your initial assessment—that is what you’re saying?’

Marty nodded, feeling sorry now for Emmaline who had this disagreeable man for a father.

‘And the man said she was pregnant when she returned to him?’

‘I don’t know about “returned”. He said she was already pregnant when she came and that’s all he’d say.’

‘Oh, she returned, for sure,’ Carlos told her, enough ice in his voice to make Marty shiver.

There was a long silence, then he added, ‘So this Emmaline, she is mine!’

He ground out the words with such evident regret—distaste almost—Marty let fly.

‘You make it sound as if she’s an albatross hung around your neck by some malign fate. She’s a baby—she’s not to blame for being born. You’re a doctor—you of all people know how conception happens. Actually, ten-year-old kids know how it happens these days. But it was up to you. If you didn’t want a child, you should have done something to prevent it.’

She was glaring directly at him so caught the flash of something that might be humour in his eyes, then he smiled as he said, ‘And do you always think of the possibility of conception when you make love with your partner? Or is the easing of the urgent need the priority of both mind and body?’

The smile, though as coolly cynical as the words, confused her to the extent she forgot to breathe, then, angry at her reaction, she snapped at him.

‘I don’t have a partner!’

Oh, hell! Mortification all over again because that wasn’t the issue—her personal life was none of Carlos Quintero’s business.