CHAPTER TWO

      WAS SASKIA PREGNANT?

      Malachi sat on one of the plastic seats in the hospital corridor. Saskia was still in the room, telling Michelle about her daughter, and he was out here...uncharacteristically rattled.

      His brain fought to focus; his body felt supercharged. He rolled the idea around his head as if testing it, seeing if it might fit.

       Pregnant?

      The problem was that he couldn’t be sure. Certainly he thought that was the last thing she’d said to that godawful nurse with the irritating voice, but then he hadn’t been thinking straight from the moment he’d stepped around that corner and caught sight of Saskia—the woman who had haunted his dreams for the last three months.

      The blood roared through Malachi’s ears.

      And elsewhere, if he was being honest.

      When he’d heard her mutter—thought he’d heard her mutter—that word pregnant as he’d approached, he hadn’t really thought a lot about it. After all, she might have been talking about any one of her patients. Or colleagues. But then they’d sat in that on-call room together and she’d been so...odd...that slowly things had started slotting themselves into different places and suddenly he’d found himself wondering if she’d actually been talking about herself.

      In that moment everything had...shifted. Kids. Family. Two things he’d thought could never be in his future. Two things he’d sworn never would be in his future. Not after the childhood he and Sol had endured. Not after becoming responsible and providing for his drug-addled mother and kid brother when he’d been a mere ten years old. He’d endured enough responsibility and commitment to last a lifetime, and he’d sworn to himself he would never put himself through any more as an adult.

      Nor would he put any kid through the trauma of having someone as detached and emotionally damaged as he was for a father.

      Instead he had dedicated himself to his work, his business, his charity. Partly because he lived for those things, but also because it ensured he’d never have time in his life for anything—or anyone—else.

      And now this.

       Maybe.

      Possibly not.

      Yet some sixth sense—the one he had trusted his entire life, the one which had allowed his eight-year-old self to keep his brother and mother together and a roof over their heads, the one which had helped him make his first six-figure sum by the age of fifteen, his first million by the age of eighteen, the one which had ensured he could send his brother to medical school and make MIG International a global business—told him it was true.

      No wonder his entire world was teetering so precariously on the edge of some black abyss.

      How was it that in the blink of an eye everything he’d worked for could suddenly be hovering over some unknown precipice? Everything that made him...him gone in one word.

       Pregnant.

      His body went cold. His brain fought to process this new information and make some kind of sense out of it. But the only thing it could come up with was that any baby couldn’t be his. They’d used protection.

      He always used protection.

      Except that first time, when all his usual rules had splintered and shattered one by one. Not least any thought to the notion of protection.

      Which meant that he had no one else to blame for the fact that a baby wasn’t wholly out of the question.

       So how the hell was any kid to cope with him as a father?

      Malachi’s mind hurtled along like a car with no brakes. He was usually controlled, intuitive—effective when it came to dealing with business problems put in front of him—but right now he felt as if the ground beneath his feet was opening up. Instead of focusing on the issue all he could picture was her lush naked body, spread out before him like some kind of personal offering. He could still practically feel the heat from her mouth, as wild as it was sweet.

      He couldn’t say she’d been experienced, or skilled, and yet he’d never replayed sex with any other woman the way he’d replayed those nights with Saskia.

       Why?

      Maybe because he’d been lusting after her from the moment she’d walked into Care to Play as a medical liaison volunteer a few months earlier. Somehow during the so-called interview she’d ended up telling him about her failed engagement and her cheating fiancé, and she’d been so refreshingly open with him that he’d found himself captivated, wondering what kind of an idiot man would let a woman like Saskia slip through his fingers.

      He’d had no intention of acting on the attraction, of course. Even as it had sizzled between them for months he’d been determined not to go there. Firstly, she was bound to be rebounding, and secondly she was a volunteer at the centre that he’d set up, and he’d told himself that was tantamount to making him her boss.

      He’d even said those very words to her that evening at the nightclub, several months later, when Saskia, Sol, and a group of their Moorlands General colleagues had been letting loose for once, and she’d laughed in his face. Confident, sassy and oh-so-sexy, she’d told him in no uncertain terms that he was nothing like her boss. She’d also told him that maybe a rebound fling was exactly what she needed, given that she’d never had a one-night stand in her life before.

      And he’d believed her. More than that, he had wanted to believe her. Because she’d spoken to something utterly primal deep within him...and what was the harm of a one-night stand?

      Only he hadn’t been able to let her go that night. Or the next night. Or the next.

      It had been the most indulgent, incredible long weekend Malachi could ever have imagined, and when she’d finally left he hadn’t been prepared for how quiet—how empty—his luxury bachelor pad would suddenly feel. As ridiculous as that was.

      He’d fantasised about her returning with a sharpness that punctured him. Whether because he knew he was nothing more to Saskia than a rebound fling, or because he knew that he didn’t have the time or inclination for a relationship, he couldn’t be sure. Either way, what choice had he had other than to put a little distance between them and avoid Care to Play every single time he’d known she was due there, in the hope of letting that sharpness dull?

      Only it hadn’t dulled. It hadn’t faded at all.

      If anything, this latest encounter had only proved that he wanted Saskia more than ever—pregnant or not.

       His baby.

      It was enough to bring his head round a full three-sixty.

      Surely he was the last person in the world who should ever have a kid? He wouldn’t love it. That quality wasn’t in him—not any more. It was gone. Spent. Used up all those years ago when he should have been the one being loved and cared for—not the other way around.

       A baby?

      He could provide for it, but he couldn’t be the all-attentive father figure it would need.

      Worse—and he was ashamed of this more than anything—he would end up resenting it, and the time and attention it demanded, the way he’d resented his own mother. The way he’d once resented even Sol.

      He still hated himself for those feelings. Even now.

      The responsibility he’d had for his younger brother since they’d been little kids had made him so angry back then.