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“I’d like to make love to you. Very, very much,” Jonas stated.
“Em, there’s no need for you to look like you’re being asked to commit for life here. We’re old enough to know we can take pleasure where we find it.”
“And walk away afterward?”
“That’s right.”
“Except it doesn’t work like that,” Em told him sadly. “Like me and Robby.”
“I don’t understand,” Jonas said.
“I thought I could just love Robby for a little bit, so I let myself become involved. And the longer it goes on, the more it’ll tear my heart out when he leaves.”
“You could adopt Robby.”
“Oh, yes?” she jeered. “How could I do that when I’m on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. What sort of mother would I make?”
“I think you’d make a fine one.”
Families in the making!
In the orphanage of a small Australian seaside town called Bay Beach there are little children desperately in need of love. Some of them have no parents, some are simply unwanted—but each child dreams about having their own family someday….
The answer to their dreams can also be found in Bay Beach! Couples who are destined for each other—even if they don’t know it yet—are brought together by love for these tiny children. Can they find true love themselves—and finally become a real family?
Previous books in the PARENTS WANTED miniseries by RITA nominated author Marion Lennox in Harlequin Romance®:
A Child in Need (#3650)
Their Baby Bargain (#3662)
Adopted: Twins! (#3694)
The Doctors’ Baby
Marion Lennox
This book is dedicated to all women with breast cancer
whose past involvement in research and clinical trials
has so improved our chances of survival today.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
DR. EMILY MAINWARING had been awake all night, delivering twins. She was probably asleep and dreaming, but right in her waiting room was…
Her ideal man!
But… This was Bay Beach. She was in the middle of morning surgery, and staring was hardly professional. Instant marriage wasn’t on the cards either. So somehow she forced herself back to being a twenty-nine-year-old country doctor instead of a lovesick teenager staring at a total stranger.
‘Mrs Robin?’
The elderly Mrs Robin rose with relief. She’d been waiting far too long. Every other patient looked at her with envy, and the stranger looked up as well.
Whew! He was even more good-looking eye to eye, and when their gazes locked…
For a moment, Em allowed herself to keep looking. Doctor assessing potential patient.
Ha! There was nothing professional in the way she was looking at this man.
For a start, he was large, in a strong-boned, muscular, six-feet-of-virile-male sort of way. Then he had the most gorgeous, burnt-red hair, crinkling into curls that were a bit unruly, and made you just want to run your fingers…
‘That’s enough of that! Concentrate on work!’ she told herself sharply. The last thing she needed this morning was distraction, and if a pair of twinkling green eyes had the capacity to knock her sideways then maybe she was even more tired than she’d thought.
‘I’m very sorry,’ she told the rest of the waiting room, the stranger included. ‘But I’ve had a couple of emergencies. I’m running almost an hour late. If anyone would like to sit on the beach and come back in a while…’
It wasn’t likely. These people were farmers or fishermen, and a visit to the doctor was a social occasion. They’d sit placidly enough, outwardly reading magazines but in reality soaking up every piece of gossip they could get.
Such as who the redhead was.
And she might have known they’d find out.
‘He’s Anna Lunn’s big brother,’ Mrs Robin told her before she even started on her litany of ills. ‘He’s three years older than Anna, and his name’s Jonas. Ooh, isn’t he lovely? When he came in with Anna, I thought maybe she had a new fella, and that wouldn’t hurt at all since that no-good Kevin walked out. But if this can’t be her new man, then it’s good that she has a brother kind enough to bring her to the doctor’s, don’t you think?’
Yes. It was. Anna Lunn was barely thirty, yet already weighed down with poverty and kids. But why…Em glanced down her list and saw the appointment, and she couldn’t suppress her misgivings.
Anna had made a special appointment and she’d brought her brother along for support. Em just knew this wasn’t going to be a five-minute consultation for a pap smear.
But there was little point in worrying about it now. With an inward sigh she mentally added another half-hour to her day and turned her attention to Mrs Robin’s blood pressure.
Charlie Henderson collapsed before she’d finished. Booked in for his regular coronary check, the fisherman was so old that he looked shrivelled and preserved for ever. He’d tucked himself into a corner of the waiting room and had been contentedly observing the kids and chaos and general confusion. Now, just as Em started writing Mrs Robins’s prescription, his eyes rolled in his head, he crumpled and slid soundlessly onto the floor.
‘Em!’ Her receptionist was banging on Em’s door
