new bikini and then had the pleasure of taking it off, and all without having to think and close the door, and afterwards, as his hands traced her body, he noticed the tiny changes, the slight fullness to her breasts, and he wondered when she was going to tell him.
‘We’d better get ready.’ He caught her as she went to get off the bed, and pulled her back to him.
‘When are you going to tell me?’
He watched the colour spread first on her cheeks and then down to her chest, watched her rapid, confused blink. ‘What?’
‘That I’m going to be a father of three?’ Jack smiled. ‘How long have you been holding out on me?’
‘Jack!’ she wailed in frustration. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. ‘I was going to tell you on holiday …’ She shook her head in exasperation. ‘I only found out this afternoon.’
‘I’ve known for a week.’ Jack grinned. ‘I thought you just weren’t telling me. I knew at the courtroom….
‘How?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘You can.’
‘I really can’t.’ Jack grinned. ‘Because you’ll accuse me of being a chauvinist.’
‘You are a chauvinist!’ Nina reminded him. ‘But I’m working on it.’ She didn’t understand. ‘How did you know before I did?’
‘You forget sometimes that you’re married to a brilliant diagnostician,’ Jack said. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you. Remember our case was pushed back, remember how that woman in the coffee shop pushed in line …?’
‘Yes.’ She was sulking before he said it.
‘And it was a tense day and I knew that your period was due, but you were lovely …’
‘Don’t!’ Nina dug him the ribs with her elbows. ‘Don’t you dare …’
‘I’m not,’ Jack said. ‘I’m just saying …’
And he was arrogant and rude and chauvinistic at times, but he was also the best thing to have happened in her life and she wouldn’t change a single piece of him.
‘Are you okay with it?’
‘Delighted,’ Jack said. ‘Who’d have thought that night when we rowed that in a few months I’d be married, a father of two, with one on the way, and we haven’t even been on our honeymoon yet?’
‘Me,’ Nina broke in, and for the first time she told him the truth, a truth she’d kept hidden from herself.
That it hadn’t been just a crush that she’d had, and she hadn’t just fancied him either, that the whole problem she’d had was …
‘I loved you from the start.’
NYC Angels: Heiress’s Baby Scandal
Janice Lynn
The socialite and the Texan doc—is this for real?
After gossip headlines announce that reluctant socialite Eleanor Aston is in a “relationship” with smooth-talking Texan Tyler Donaldson, for one glorious night this fake fling becomes fact, not fiction! Devoted nurse Eleanor knows she’s in over her head with neonatal doc Ty—and that’s before the paparazzi discover her baby bombshell!
To my editor, Lucy Gilmour.
Thanks for all you do!
UH-UH. THERE WAS absolutely no way Dr. Eleanor Aston was wearing that itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny scrap of sparkly spandex her sister had sent for her to wear tonight!
“Take it back,” she ordered Norma, the darling, elderly woman who’d headed up the Aston household for over twenty years and a woman who was more like family than—well, than Eleanor’s biological family.
Looking out of place and uncomfortable in the hospital doctors’ lounge where Eleanor had pulled her to talk in private, Norma shook her head. “Sorry, but I can’t do that. Brooke gave me specific instructions. You are to wear that dress and those shoes to the ribbon-cutting ceremony.”
Right, because she could squeeze her more than generous curves into the dress. Eleanor shuddered just at the mental image.
“I’m giving you specific instructions, too. Take it back, because even if I could squeeze into that...” She eyed the glitzy red dress and matching stilettos her sister had picked out. “Well, it’s not exactly my style, is it?”
Staring at Eleanor with her almost-black eyes, Norma shrugged her coat-clad shoulders. “Perhaps your sister thinks your style needs an update.”
Norma’s tone implied that Brooke wasn’t the only one who thought that.
Ha. No doubt about it. Media darling Brooke Aston definitely thought her sister’s style as ugly duckling in the midst of a family of swans should change. Mostly because Brooke thought Eleanor’s usual wardrobe of hospital scrubs to be the bottom of fashion’s totem pole.
Eleanor loved her hospital scrubs.
For so many reasons. Never had she felt more proud than when she’d donned a pair after she’d completed her training as a pediatrician specializing in neonatology. Plus, shapeless hospital scrubs hid a lot of body flaws.
“A lot” being the key words. She’d never be a size two like Brooke and she’d quit beating herself up over that years ago.
She eyed the scrap of fancy material again, crinkled her nose and shook her head. “I’m sorry my sister wasted your time, but you can keep the dress because I’m not going to wear it, or those torture devices my sister calls shoes.” She glanced at her watch. “Sorry to run, but I’ve got to get back to the NICU. My patients need me.”
Norma winced, but didn’t look surprised by Eleanor’s answer. “Brooke won’t be happy.”
Was her baby sister ever happy with anything that didn’t involve all the attention being on her? Too bad she’d had an allergic reaction to some new beauty cream that had left her unable to bask in the limelight of Senator Cole Aston’s latest publicity project.
At least this time Eleanor agreed with how her father was spending his money. Actually, she was quite pleased, which was the only reason she’d agreed to take Brooke’s place at the ribbon-cutting ceremony this evening. He’d donated an exorbitant amount to build a new neonatal wing for premature babies at the Angel Mendez Children’s Hospital where she worked.
She loved being a part of something as wonderful as Angel’s, New York’s first and finest free children’s hospital. Working with her preemies left her with a feeling inside
