The Accidental Daddy Read online

  Blocked duodenum—the little tube leading out of the stomach. He could even remember the picture in the neonatal textbook.

  ‘Could it be indicative of other problems?’ Max asked, fear for the child gripping his gut and accelerating his heartbeat now. ‘Heart defects?’

  ‘I’ve checked his heart as it’s sometimes associated with congenital heart defects and I’ve taken blood for further tests, but I’d say it was just an anomaly during his development—the solid tube inside the foetus early on just didn’t quite open.’

  ‘It happens,’ Joey said quietly, and he could feel that she’d relaxed, just a little, now she knew it wasn’t something worse.

  ‘It happens,’ she repeated, leaning into Max but with her eyes still on the baby.

  Just like accidents in IVF labs, Max thought. Exceedingly rare but not unknown.

  ‘And what do we do about it?’ Max asked, pretending to be very grown-up and practical about this, although inside he was a mess. ‘Operate?

  It was the utter helplessness of the tiny infant that had clutched at his heart and had made Bob’s matter-of-fact pronouncements so hurtful. And Joey, who would know exactly what was involved, must be feeling a million times worse.

  ‘Yes, he’ll need an op. First we’ll get him stable, IV feeds, put a tube down to drain his stomach, then surgery. It’s quite simple. The bloke I’d use—you’d know Prentice, Joey—does it through the navel. Once in he makes two tiny incisions through the duodenum, joins up the ends either side of the blockage and you’re done.’

  Max stared at the man who’d been quite a close friend all through university and wondered how he could be so casual—so laid back—about an operation on a newborn baby.

  Bob was talking to Joey, explaining the expected time frame for the op, but Max’s attention was all on the baby.

  How could anyone operate on such a tiny infant?

  Of course, he knew it happened all the time, particularly for babies born with congenital heart defects, but his baby?

  ‘You and Max...’ he heard Bob say, and their two names, linked like that, made it sound as if they were established partners.

  But Joey and he were partners—in the baby if nothing else. His sudden realisation of this was a bit like an out-of-body experience he’d heard people describe, although those people were usually seriously ill or had been hit on the head. His hit had been to the heart.

  Whatever—the out-of-body feeling didn’t seem to be going away. He was lodged in a parallel universe where Joey and the baby had become priorities in his life.

  Just for the moment, of course...

  * * *

  Bob had departed to organise the surgeon, and Max helped Joey into the chair beside the crib.

  ‘I want to hold him,’ she said, her voice still shaky from the news of the operation.

  ‘I’ll get a nurse to keep the tubes and wires untangled. Just sit for a minute.’

  But before he could depart she grabbed his hand and he had to lean down close to her to hear the tremulous words that faltered from her lips.

  ‘I couldn’t have done it without you—though how any man could go through that with a stranger I’ve no idea. You were wonderful!’

  And she smiled, the kind of smile that made it impossible not to drop a kiss on those tempting pink lips—a kiss that somehow deepened, until it was like a fine high-tensile wire holding them together, bonding them in something even bigger than the baby, although he was most definitely part of it.

  ‘Weird, huh?’ she said as they broke apart.

  ‘Beyond weird,’ he agreed, though he didn’t share his parallel universe theory. Instead, he went to find a nurse to help settle the baby in Joey’s arms.

  It took only seconds to get the little one sorted, with the tubes and wires carefully arranged so nothing snagged.

  Max sat on the arm of the chair and touched his son’s stubby excuse for a nose.

  ‘This surgeon, you know him?’ he asked, as Joey examined the tiny ears, the perfect toenails, taking in the miracle that she’d produced.

  Wide blue eyes looked up at him, fear beating in the air once again.

  ‘He’s fine—terrific—but, oh, Max, he’s so tiny—the baby, not the surgeon.’

  Joey held the baby close to her breast, reminding herself she’d known this might be the case and that duodenal atresia was one of the most common of problems in newborn babies.

  But how could someone operate on this tiny mortal?

  Her tiny mortal!

  She tightened her arms around him, careful not to squash but wanting to hold him close forever. Max was saying soothing things but she barely heard, all her energy concentrated on the baby as if by will alone she could keep him safe—make him well.

  Hearing but not listening, she explored her baby, touching the downy cheek, running her fingers over the soft hair on his head—dark hair that she knew he could well lose. David had been fair and she’d pictured his baby as fair like him—but this wasn’t David’s baby. And that was a whole other story.

  Right now Max Winthrop’s presence was a very reassuring bulk on the arm of the chair beside her. Although he’d been wonderful through the night, he’d told her enough that she knew he had wanderlust. He might want to be involved with his baby, but how much could she expect from him?

  How much did she want from him?

  A healthy baby was one thing...

  She had too many questions and no answers at all!

  ‘Look, I can stick around for a while so let’s just keep going an hour at a time, then a day, and perhaps a week, and take it all as it comes,’ he said, slipping an arm that she found immensely comforting around her shoulders.

  ‘Did you learn to read minds in some ashram in India?’ she asked, letting her cheek rest against his hip. She pulled the little cap back over the baby’s hair, then looked up at his father. ‘You answered my thoughts.’

  He grinned at her.

  ‘Not that hard when the same things are running amok in my head as well. It just seems to me that we take, well, baby steps, I suppose.’

  The grin turned into a smile, a soft, gentle smile that somehow made her think everything would be all right.

  Possibly forever!

  How ridiculous! She didn’t know the man; for all he was the father of her baby.

  Which reminded her...

  ‘Do you want to hold him?’

  He reached down and slid his little finger into the palm of a tiny hand.

  ‘No, he looks so peaceful lying there, I’m content to watch and wonder.’

  ‘I wasn’t really listening. Did Bob say when they’ll operate?’ she asked, looking up at him—seeing the wonder he spoke of in his eyes, feeling warmth flood her veins again as those eyes smiled at her.

  Or had she imagined the smile? Because when he spoke he was all business.

  ‘He’ll contact the surgeon who’ll come to see him, then talk to us.’ He paused, then said quietly, ‘Do you mind too much about the “us”? When I came to see you, I didn’t envisage this happening, but now—well—do you mind that I want to be involved in all the discussion about the little fellow’s health?’

  Joey didn’t have to think about it.

  ‘I’m glad there’s an “us,”’ she answered honestly. ‘I find the thought of him needing an operation very scary so I’m glad I’m not alone. I’ve got friends, of course, and they’ll be wonderfully supportive when they know he has a problem, but it’s not the same, is it? Because he’s not their baby.’

  ‘And he is ours,’ Max agreed, tightening his grip on her shoulder. ‘As I said before, we’ll work it out.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  A NURSE APPEARED, needing to do a check, and they returned the baby to the crib.

 
‘You can stay there, sit in the chair, and touch him as much as you like,’ the nurse told them. ‘Dr Prentice, the surgeon, will be here soon.’

  ‘I’ll stay,’ Joey said, and found herself hoping Max would say the same, although he must be tired. But she would like him here when the surgeon came. Mike Prentice was an excellent neonatal surgeon. She’d worked under him during her training so she didn’t really need to worry, but she would like Max to be there.

  ‘I don’t even know where you live.’ The words came out as an accusation and she tried to make amends. ‘I was thinking you’d probably like a shower and a shave, some clean clothes. If it’s not too far, I could text you when the surgeon comes.’

  ‘I’ll stay unshaven and hopefully not too hard on the nose until after he’s been, but to answer your question, I’m temporarily in a serviced apartment across the river. My family is all in North Queensland. They’re a stay-put lot and think of me as some kind of changeling because of my wanderings. Oh, hell!’

  The ‘oh, hell’ had sounded a bit desperate and as he didn’t enlarge on it, Joey had to ask.

  ‘Oh, hell?’ she prompted.

  He was frowning now, looking really concerned.

  ‘It can’t be that bad,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, no? Although he doesn’t know it yet, this poor little bloke has myriad relations—grandparent, aunts, uncles, cousins, all of whom will think he’s partly theirs and want to shower him with gifts, cluck over every detail of his birth, probably cry about the operation and generally want to be very much part of his life. What on earth am I going to tell them about him?’

  ‘Maybe the truth?’ Joey suggested, smiling at his obvious discomfort but excited at the same time that her baby would have a family.

  She’d have a family?

  Don’t be ridiculous!

  ‘Tell them I’d forgotten I’d stored away some sperm, mainly because my then fiancée that none of them liked in the first place insisted on it, and then you got it by mistake and this is the baby? Who’s going to believe that?’

  ‘Not very many people,’ Joey agreed, ‘but it is the truth. Although you hadn’t told me the bit about the fiancée insisting before!’

  She hesitated then knew she had to ask.

  ‘Why didn’t they like the fiancée? Or fiancées, plural.’

  His turn to hesitate, and when he answered she suspected it wasn’t the truth—or the whole truth.

  ‘Only boy with three older sisters,’ he said, glibly enough. ‘No one was ever really going to be good enough for me.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Joey said, and let it rest, actually quite admiring of Max Winthrop that he wouldn’t put his ex-fiancées down. Although she did want to ask what his sisters had thought of the second fiancée—the one of the Dear John text.

  ‘Tell me about Joey McMillan,’ he said, and she was glad she hadn’t asked as he obviously wanted to get right away from the fiancée subject.

  ‘Nothing much to tell,’ she said. ‘You’ve seen where I grew up, both parents doctors, grandparents before them the same, so both generations only had one child—too busy for more, I guess.’

  She stopped, wondering how different life would have been if she’d had a sister to talk to, to share secrets with, or a brother to tease or be teased by. There’d been times she’d hated being an only child, although she’d always known she’d been loved.

  It certainly would have helped when—

  She stopped. Why tell him?

  Why not?

  ‘My parents and grandparents were in Thailand, celebrating Mum and Dad’s fortieth wedding anniversary, and were out on a small boat when the tsunami hit.’

  She’d told the story so many times it grew shorter and less emotional with each retelling. A flat sentence that hid such a wealth of horror she rarely allowed herself to think about it.

  But Max obviously knew something of horror, for he put his arm around her shoulders again and drew her close to his side, trailing a hand ever so softly over her hair.

  ‘There is no remedy for the pain of such loss,’ he said quietly, ‘or words that help. I cannot imagine what inner strength you must possess to have kept going after that.’

  No wonder she thought of people she loved being hostages to fate!

  No wonder she was afraid of loving her baby too much, when everyone else she’d loved had been snatched away from her.

  He’d been undergoing treatment when the tsunami had devastated parts of Thailand and Indonesia, so Joey must have lost her family not long after David’s death.

  ‘You must have thought you were cursed.’

  She tilted her head back to look up at him.

  ‘I was certain of it. I was a total mess. In fact, young Jacqui we called in to see on the way to the hospital was my saviour. I was doing a stint at the kids’ hospital, and I came across her as a patient. She’d recently been diagnosed with type one diabetes and was determined that there was no way she, or anyone else, was going to stick needles in her body every day. She was such a fighter, I felt ashamed of my own weakness, my self-pity, and convincing her that the treatment would be worthwhile—that she could turn into the artist she dreams of being—not only got me through that time but made me decide to specialise in paediatrics.’

  ‘And she’s become special to you now.’

  It was a statement, not a question, and Joey knew that this man understood.

  But thinking about Jacqui was better than dwelling in the past.

  ‘She has. Especially when she became one of my first private patients when I started practising. Of course, there are more problems now she’s a teenager because the chronic illness exacerbates all the normal behavioural changes in puberty. She’s fought anorexia. Type one diabetes is so hard for adolescents to handle—there’s a constant focus on food, which creates more problems. That’s why I was worried about the effect of stress on her last night.’

  ‘I can understand that. But what so-called normal behavioural changes would it affect?’

  Joey smiled at him.

  ‘Challenging authority is the easy one—how better to challenge your parents and those in charge than by not balancing your insulin, which is unbalanced enough anyway with growth hormones and sex steroids running rampant in their bodies?’

  ‘Causing?’

  He’d probably guessed she needed to be very careful to increase insulin doses to keep her blood glucose in control. ‘Then there’s all the outward adolescent stuff. If the girl with pink and purple spots on her skin becomes popular then they all want pink and purple spots. Part of being an adolescent is fitting in with the mob so no one notices all the strange stuff going on inside you. Kids with diabetes are different from the start, so it’s only natural they suffer more from the bad things of adolescence—depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and weight issues.’

  Joey sighed.

  ‘It was a really bad time to be having a baby,’ she said, stroking the baby in question with feather-light fingers. ‘As far as Jacqui is concerned.’

  ‘She’ll get through it,’ Max assured her.

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Joey retorted, wondering how she’d reached the stage of chatting so easily to this man—sharing her pain and her concerns with him. Not to mention sitting there with his arm around her.

  ‘I think I do,’ he said, and she glanced up to see him smile at her. ‘I’m pretty sure that young girl would have taken you for a role model and seen your strength and learned from it.’

  Still smiling, he teased some hair off her face, tucking it back behind her ear in a gesture that, for a moment, made her heart stop.

  ‘Now, what we need in this place are positive vibes, so get with the programme. Positivity for Jacqui and positivity for this baby.’

  He stopped rather abruptly and his smile had changed to
a slight frown.

  ‘He needs a name. Were you going to call him David? I don’t mind at all if you do, it’s a good strong name—’

  ‘You don’t mind at all if I do?’ Joey repeated, and knew she sounded shell-shocked, because she’d been about to demand just why the hell he should mind when the reality of the situation struck her anew.

  ‘Oh, heavens, of course, he’s your baby too,’ she muttered, more to herself than to him.

  ‘I did think we’d established that, and the clinic was quite certain the mistake had been made. But we can get Bob to do a DNA just to be sure,’ Max told her, and felt a shudder run through her body.

  She shook her head, and gave a gulp that could well have been a swallowed sob so he had to tighten his grip on her again and make noises he hoped were soothing.

  ‘I don’t think I could bear to know he belongs to some stranger,’ she whispered, ‘but, of course, you’ll want to know.’

  Feeling her distress, knowing it was partly the hormonal surge that would have accompanied the birth, he still didn’t want her fretting. He put his hand under her chin and tilted her face so she was looking up at him again.

  ‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘I don’t need to have DNA proof. I know he’s mine. I caught him, remember. He smiled at me and did a “Hi, Dad” kind of wink.’

  Then, because she’d tasted so sweet the first time, he bent and kissed the full, pink lips, softly parted, not quite believing his words but definitely more relaxed.

  She pulled away, although not immediately, staring up at him, definitely more surprised than disgusted, shocked or horrified. Which, of course, prompted the earthier side of him to want to do it again.

  He did refrain. And to distract himself from his other thoughts, he returned to the subject he’d begun earlier.

  ‘So, with that established, what about a name?’

  Her turn to smile and he found he really liked it when she smiled—probably that earthy bit of him again!

  ‘I’ve been trying to think of names for the last six months but for some reason all I could come up with was Caspar. And then I wasn’t sure whether to spell it with a C or a K and, really, it’s not a sensible name at all. He’d probably be teased at school.’