Baby for the Midwife: The Midwife's Baby / Spanish Doctor, Pregnant Midwife / Countdown to Baby. Anne Fraser
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this wasn’t right. She forced her fingers open and then his shirt slipped away, just like the moment had to. The last thing Max needed was a clinging vine, he’d said himself he admired her independence, and she pushed the feelings away along with his chest because she already owed this man too much.
She could not get involved with Max. Not while Sol’s presence in her life hung over her.
She sat back and, Max being Max, he let her go. Which was a shame but the right thing to do.
For her to offer something that wasn’t really there wouldn’t be fair to Max and she was beginning to think if she let down the barriers and allowed him into her own rapidly beating heart, she would never find herself when she left.
‘Thank you, kind sir,’ was all she said, and she leaned forward to stand up. ‘I think I’ll check on Elsa.’
Max’s hand caught her wrist and the strength in his fingers halted her rising.
‘I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.’
She looked at him, at his strong jawline and then his warm golden eyes, and she said quietly, ‘You didn’t embarrass me, Max.’
‘Then why are you running away?’ His voice, too, was barely audible.
She breathed in and the faintest tinge of his aftershave remained on her skin. ‘You had a nice life before I came along.’
He laughed cynically. ‘I nearly married the wrong woman before you came along. You saved me from a fate worse than death. I’ve been very happy with you, Georgia.’
‘Tayla offered what you wanted, Max. A free life without the dramas of a family. Elsa and I have plenty of dramas. You haven’t married the right woman yet. I’m only the stopgap.’
Just when he thought they might have made progress, he’d lost her. He could see it. ‘What if it doesn’t feel that way to me?’
‘Then you would be thinking with another part of your body, not your brain.’
Ouch. She definitely wasn’t ready to change their relationship. He’d like to get his hands on that ex-husband of hers and throttle him. He was beginning to think there was more to his nastiness than she’d said. He let go of her wrist and she stood up.
She nodded and left almost at a run, and Max gazed out over the veranda. He’d scared her—but for a moment there he’d thought she was on the same wavelength as he.
Max watched a tiny meteorite arc down towards the ocean and disappear before it reached the water, a bit like the opportunity that had just passed him.
He could wait. He would have to. He would wait until she was secure in herself.
He guessed that wasn’t going to happen until she knew Elsa was safe from her father, but he hoped he, Max, wasn’t too old to enjoy it by then. It was so damn hard to keep his hands off her.
He wondered what he could do differently to dissipate the awkwardness he’d created between them.
For someone who had never had a problem with come-hither lines, he’d botched it badly. No doubt the difference being this time he was emotionally involved and becoming more so every second.
The feel of her lips against his had been as poignant as he’d anticipated. The need to feel the rest of her against him rose like Mount Warning in the distance and just as appropriately named. He would have to be patient.
Georgia gently pushed open the door to Elsa’s room and moved to stand beside the cot. Her tiny daughter lay in a shaft of moonlight and her rosy cheeks glowed with health as she sucked her lip gently in her sleep.
Why couldn’t she and Elsa have the wonderful life she had begun to suspect Max could offer her?
Because even now Max might be hurt when the time came that she had to leave with Elsa because from what he’d said tonight, he could certainly become attached to her daughter.
Max had told her he’d planned not to have children with Tayla so the same reasons were still there. Yet here she was with a baby that was anything but easy at times. The upheaval in Max’s life had been caused by a child he wasn’t even the father of.
Apart from recently, the poor man hadn’t even left the house except for work because of her and Elsa. Even Mrs White saw that.
But she, Georgia, was a mess and Max didn’t deserve that or the danger she would bring in the future.
Max had no idea how much trouble Sol could be and although she really needed to leave now, before she did any more damage, she couldn’t. It wouldn’t be safe to leave while she was still vulnerable to Sol with Elsa so young.
She glanced down at her defenceless daughter again and reality slapped her with the obvious she had begun to forget. What was she doing even contemplating her own happiness before the safety of Elsa?
As a mother she should be concentrating on her baby and setting up her future life, not fantasising about a man she could bring to ruin by association.
Her problems were not Max’s, though he obviously was beginning to think they were. They needed to avoid the type of comments and moves he’d made tonight or it was all going to become much harder. She would never be free to take on emotional issues with any man and Max didn’t deserve that.
On Tuesday morning Georgia stayed out of the kitchen until Max had gone to work.
Cowardly, but she hadn’t been able to face him, because some time in the night she had discovered that with all the reasons for not staying with Max the one that loomed largest was the fact that she’d fallen irresponsibly in love with him.
She was a fool. Though this time, at least, she had fallen for a worthy man. Which was all the more reason not to drag him into the danger she knew was ahead.
What was becoming obvious was that Max wanted more, wanted to move their relationship onto a whole new plane, and she had too much baggage to drag him down with her.
She’d just have to be careful to keep him safe by maintaining her distance. And she’d make sure Max did, too.
That night at dinner, sitting across from Max, she tried really hard not to glance out to the swing seat on the veranda and think of Max’s kiss at this time last night.
From the way he kept glancing at her, she had the feeling Max was remembering too.
‘How’s your sawdust?’ Max said conversationally.
‘Fine,’ Georgia said, as she tried to rationalise with herself about how she was doing the right thing to block Max out. Then his words sank in.
‘What did you say?’
‘We’re both chewing away diligently but I had to look again to see what I was actually eating. I think we should both accept that while it is very nice to kiss it causes problems in our day-to-day world for the moment.’
Georgia could feel the heat in her cheeks but she was glad Max had had the courage to clear the air before she’d had to.
‘I agree,’ she said, which was pretty lame but that was the best she could do at the moment. She forced herself to meet his eyes. ‘Thank you, Max, for understanding.’
‘You’re welcome. Now let’s talk of something else. You didn’t miss any obstetrics at the hospital today so I hope you have someone to play midwife with tomorrow when you go in for your next shift.’
She followed his lead gratefully. ‘You did say your statistics pointed to one birth every two days.’
‘I’m infallible. I know you enjoyed your first day.’
Georgia thought back to her first shift and smiled. ‘They even paid me to have fun and brush up on my emergency obsterics. And it worked well because I was home by three in the afternoon and still had a few hours to feed and bath Elsa before you came home. Mrs White is looking forward to tomorrow