they had made, loved doing sport with Blake and just having a childhood thirty years late. He knew she was fishing, knew Nina was waiting for him to admit it was too much at times.
He never did.
Still, there were some advantages to having the house to themselves, because he had her try on her 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
To my editor, Lucy Gilmour. Thanks for all you do!
Dear Reader
Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m a sucker for a cowboy. I mean, really, there’s just something about a gorgeous man in a cowboy hat that makes my heart go thump-thump-thumpity-thump. Make that man gorgeous, good-hearted and the owner of a sexy Texan drawl and I might just have to turn up the AC. Tyler Donaldson is just such a man. Ty was my first cowboy hero, but I seriously doubt he’ll be my last. I had a lot of fun researching his character. Really, I did. Have I mentioned how much I love my job?
Ty and Ellie’s story also presented me with another new experience as this was my first continuity series. Working closer with my fellow Medical Romance™ authors was great, and I loved watching as each of our stories developed. What an amazingly talented group!
I hope you enjoy Ty and Ellie’s story as much as I enjoyed researching (grin!) and writing their story. Drop me an e-mail at [email protected] to share your thoughts about their romance, cowboys, or just to say hello.
Happy reading!
Janice
CHAPTER ONE
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.”
