Susan Crosby: The Doctor's Pregnant Bride? / The Texas Billionaire's Baby: The Doctor's Pregnant Bride? / Baby By Surprise

THE DOCTOR’S

PREGNANT BRIDE?

SUSAN CROSBY

AND

THE TEXAS

BILLIONAIRE’S

BABY

KAREN ROSE SMITH

www.millsandboon.co.uk

THE DOCTOR’S

PREGNANT BRIDE?

SUSAN CROSBY

SUSAN CROSBYbelieves in the value of setting goals, but also in the magic of making wishes, which often do come true—as long as she works hard enough. Along life’s journey she’s done a lot of the usual things—married, had children, attended college a little later than the average co-ed and earned a BA in English. Then she dove off the deep end into a full-time writing career, a wish come true.

Susan enjoys writing about people who take a chance on love, sometimes against all odds. She loves warm, strong heroes and good-hearted, self-reliant heroines, and she will always believe in happily ever after.

More can be learned about her at www.susancrosby.com.

Dear Reader,

One of life’s biggest heartbreaks can be someone’s inability to conceive a child. Doctors and researchers have worked tirelessly to change that painful situation, with increasing success. My hero, Ted Bonner, is such a doctor, a man on a mission to treat infertility. I imagine him to be like so many others in that field: dedicated, devoted and driven.

But Ted needs balance in his life, too. So along comes nurse Sara Beth O’Connell, a woman just as dedicated to her work, but one who also knows how to relax—and to love. She has a lot to teach Dr Bonner.

I had a great time playing in the same sandbox with the other terrific and talented authors in this series. I hope you enjoy the results of the fun we all had.

All my best,

Susan

To Paul, aka “Fandango,” fellow foodie, with great

appreciation—for your indefatigable help with

research, legal and otherwise, and for all the

times you crack me up. Thank you.

Sara Beth O’Connell slowed her bike to a stop at a red light, her gaze fixed on it. Red, the color of hearts and roses—

A car honked, jolting her into action. She pedaled through the intersection, picking up the bike lane again on the other side. The air was unusually mild and the traffic Sunday-afternoon light in Cambridge, Massachusetts, giving her time to think, time to decide that she wasn’t really bothered by not having a date on Valentine’s Day. It was more about what being dateless implied—that there was no one special enough in her life to spend the romantic evening with.

So what, right? No big deal. Only the minute hand on her biological clock was ticking, not the hour hand.

And then there was the man in the grocery store earlier …

Sara Beth tossed her head, her bike helmet preventing her long hair from falling into her face as she rode into the employee parking lot of the Armstrong Fertility Institute, the understated but modern structure where she worked as head nurse. Eyeing Lisa Armstrong’s car in the distance, she locked her bike to a rack, then moved to the employee entrance. She slid her ID card into the security reader and pressed her thumb against a pad until a buzzer went off, unlocking the door.

Once inside, her footsteps barely registered in the quiet building as she headed to Lisa’s office, finding her door open. The head administrator of the institute, a research center and fertility clinic, sat in front of her computer, her slender frame hunched, her dark eyes focused on the screen.

Sara Beth drew a calming breath, not because she was annoyed that Lisa had called her into the office on a Sunday, but because of the memory of the man Sara Beth had seen that morning buying a stuffed teddy and gummy bears for his five-year-old daughter. My Valentine, he’d called her when the clerk commented on the items. Sara Beth hadn’t been lucky enough to have a father do that for her. This morning’s reminder of that loss curled painfully inside her.

Ignoring the flash of pain, she set her helmet on top of a file cabinet, unzipped her jacket then plopped into a chair on the other side of Lisa’s desk. “What’s so all-fired important that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow? Or you couldn’t tell me on the phone?”

Lisa blinked. “You have something better to do?”

“Just because you work 24/7 doesn’t mean I have to, you know,” Sara Beth said, not letting Lisa off easy. “It is Valentine’s Day.”

Lisa’s smile was a little crooked. Her dark eyes shimmered knowingly. “You don’t have a date.”

“How do you know?”

“How long have we been best friends, Sara Beth?”

Sarah Beth pulled off her jacket, not wanting to make eye contact, not wanting Lisa to play the best-friends card for whatever it was she’d called Sara Beth in on a Sunday for. “Since before we spoke our first words.”

“Twenty-eight years. If you had a date tonight, I would know.” Lisa sat back, looking satisfied with herself. “You tell me everything.”

“Not everything.”

“Everything important.”

Sara Beth sniffed. “A date on Valentine’s Day isn’t important.”

Lisa laughed.

After a moment, Sara Beth smiled. “So, what’s up? Why the command performance?”

Lisa lowered her voice. “Shut the door, please.”

“Someone else is in the building?” Sara Beth asked, complying. “Someone else doesn’t know that weekends are for relaxation?”

“As a matter of fact—Dr. Bonner.”

Which meant he didn’t have a date, either. If a man like Ted Bonner didn’t have a date, she couldn’t feel sorry for herself. Except, he still could have dinner plans. It wasn’t too late for that. She wouldn’t have minded going out with him herself.…

“This has something to do with Dr. Bonner?” Sara Beth asked.

“Everything to do with him. You know the investigation he’s supposed to be running on the protocol errors he and Dr. Demetrios discovered right after we hired them a few months back?”

“Of course.”

“They haven’t come up with results yet. We’ve learned that some outsiders are starting to question our recent cluster of multiple births. Bad press will hurt us, especially our funding. We already narrowly escaped a disaster when that magazine article was published a while back about donor eggs being misused here. We can’t afford another problem, or even a hint of one. We need answers, Sara Beth, before the press gets wind of this one.”

“Not just answers but exoneration,” Sara Beth said.

“Well, yes, of course, but first and foremost, we need to know whether information has been falsified or breached in the past—or whatever the truth is. And we need to know now.”

“How does that affect me?”

Lisa leaned her elbows on her desk. “We want you to assist Drs. Bonner and Demetrios so that the project gets done. You will report to us if they’re doing anything to stall the investigation.”

She would be working directly for the man she’d had a serious lust for since she’d first laid eyes on him?

“Um, us?” she asked.

“Paul and me.”

“Why would the doctors stall? They weren’t part of the problem, if there is a problem. It happened before they were hired.”

“Because even a whisper of scandal could affect donations and grant money, which will limit Dr. Bonner’s and Dr. Demetrios’s hope of success in their research—not to mention the institute’s reputation and credibility. If something unethical has been going on, our funds could dry up and their jobs could be eliminated. Wouldn’t you stall if that was about to happen to you?”