The Baby of Their Dreams (Contemporary Medical Romance) (13 page)

‘I lied to you,’ he said.

Cat woke to those words and his kiss on her shoulder.

‘When?’

‘The second time we met,’ Dominic admitted. ‘I didn’t just happen to see the maternity leave position. I was already thinking of moving to London.’

‘Not Spain?’ Cat’s brain was all foggy.

‘I was thinking of moving to Spain, I almost was moving to Spain, but I couldn’t quite get that weekend out of my head and I was wondering, before I cut all ties here, whether it might be worth...’

Cat lay there in silence as he continued.

‘I regretted how it ended and I wondered if we stood a chance. I kept waiting to get over you but I didn’t so I was looking at jobs in London. I was thinking of taking a temporary one before I moved to Spain and catching up with you to see...’

‘See what?’

‘If what we’d found that weekend still existed.’

Cat felt his hand stroking her stomach and his lovely long body melded with hers and, yes, what they’d found still existed.

‘I haven’t been honest with you,’ Cat said, but tears tripped her words and he kissed the back of her head.

‘That’s okay,’ Dominic said. ‘You were stepping into my hotel room, not a confessional.’

Her stomach tightened and Cat stretched her legs out because it hurt, not just in her stomach but her back too and right down to her toes. ‘Oh...’ Cat breathed her way out of it. ‘I think...’

‘You are,’ Dominic said. Her contractions were coming about five minutes apart.

‘It’s too soon.’

‘You’re thirty-six weeks, it’s fine.’

‘I mean, it’s too soon for us,’ she said, and started to cry. ‘I was going to talk to you. I wanted to tell you things when we went away.’

‘We’ve got ages to talk,’ Dominic said. ‘First labours take...’ And he stopped then, halted at his own presumption as realisation hit.

‘Second.’

She started to really cry.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

They should be sitting in some lovely mansion, having afternoon tea, and she would be selecting a cupcake and mention Thomas, and Mike, oh, so casually and bypass the agony it had been. Instead, her stomach was in spasm and her knees were coming up and, ready or not, this baby was coming today.

‘I want a bath,’ she said. ‘Oh, my God, we had sex...’

She was frantic for her bath and to arrive all clean and shiny in the labour ward.

No, it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

He ran the bath, she rang the hospital and it was just as well she’d told him because the tired midwife asked if it was her first.

‘No, it’s my second.’

Dominic closed his eyes as he checked the water and then Cat came in.

‘They said to come straight in.’

‘Have your bath,’ Dominic said. ‘Your waters haven’t broken...’

He helped her in and she got another contraction and from the strength and speed of them now she wasn’t going to be sitting in the bath for very long. She looked at Dominic sitting on the toilet lid and there would be no Gemma delivering her. It would be a stranger. She had no choice but to confess how scared she was today.

And so she told him a little, about the happy person she had once been and the baby and husband-to-be she’d had, and he sat, as she had for him, quietly.

She told him about the ultrasound and the Edwards syndrome and he didn’t start demanding if she’d been thoroughly tested this time around, he just sat. And he didn’t insist that it was unlikely to happen again and that his brilliant sperm couldn’t possibly be at fault, he just sat.

‘Thomas,’ Cat said. ‘Thomas Gregory Hayes.’

And he wanted to put his hand up and tell her to stop.

You had a baby, I get it.

But they had to share themselves.

‘Thomas, because I love the name. Gregory, after my brother, and Hayes because I didn’t want Mike to be attached to him. He didn’t want him...’

And still he sat there as Cat, angry, pregnant, lay in the bathtub.

‘He’s in the drawer.’

Dominic gave a slightly startled look as if she was telling him to go and fetch a dead baby or an urn of ashes from her bedside.

‘His photo,’ Cat said.

He went and fetched it and came back.

And, no, it wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Where were her cupcakes, where was her cup of tea and something to distract her as he looked closely at her child.

Dominic sat on the loo seat as she breathed through another contraction, and when she finally opened her eyes it was to see the man who had told her with little emotion about the death of his wife crying.

He did not recoil in horror. He was looking at her son and then he looked at her and finally, only then, he spoke.

‘A few weeks ago I couldn’t imagine having a baby and now I’m sitting here trying to imagine how I’d feel if I lost one.’

Oh, my God!
Cat was stunned.
He’s crying!

‘Sorry, Cat.’

‘It’s fine.’

‘No, I’m really sorry. I should be...’

What?

Stronger?

A touch more dismissive?

That he cried for her son and her loss meant the world.

‘I wanted to get to twenty-five weeks,’ Cat said. ‘And then...’ She told the truth. ‘I didn’t trust you enough to tell you about him.’

‘I understand why you didn’t.’

They trusted each other now. Their hearts always had but finally their minds had caught up.

‘We need to get to the hospital,’ she said, and as she stood her waters broke.

‘Some one-night stand you turned out to be,’ he said as he helped her out of the bath.

A drive that took twenty minutes at night was markedly longer at 7:00 a.m. and Cat was having visions of delivering at the kerb when thankfully the hospital came into view.

‘Argh, I’m supposed to be working,’ Dominic said, and made a very rapid call but then started to laugh.

‘Poor Julia, she’s really confused now. I just told her my partner’s about to deliver a baby.’

They walked down the long corridor and gathered a few double takes along the way as some of the staff saw that snooty Cat was in her dressing gown
and
with the new sexy doctor.

That this was Cat’s second pregnancy was on her chart, mentioned in every phone call made, and then the lovely doctor who came asked about Thomas as he went through Cat’s notes.

‘You had him at twenty-five weeks?’

Cat nodded.

‘Normal vaginal delivery?’

‘Yes,’ Cat said. ‘Well, it didn’t feel very normal at the time.’

‘Okay, I’m just going to take a look...’ The doctor’s voice trailed off as the doors opened and Gemma walked in.

‘Thanks, Chand.’ She smiled. ‘This special delivery is mine.’ And then she gave Cat a very severe frown. ‘I told you to call me...’

‘So you did,’ Cat said. ‘How did you find out I was here?’

‘I told the ward that if you came in they were to let me know.’

‘You knew I was going to have her.’

‘Sort of,’ Gemma said. ‘But I was here anyway.’ She started to pull on gloves. ‘I couldn’t sleep, I wanted to see Nigel.’ Gemma looked over at Dominic and tested the water. ‘Can you step out while I examine her, please?’

‘He’s staying.’

‘I can have him removed.’ Gemma grinned, delighted by the turn of events.

‘There’s no need for that,’ Cat said.

‘Has she finally told you?’ Gemma asked, looking up at Cat’s puffy face.

‘Yep.’

‘And so you know that this going to be very emotional for her,’ Gemma checked. ‘I mean, above and beyond.’

‘I do.’

‘How’s Nigel?’ Cat asked as Gemma pulled the sheet back.

‘Talking,’ Gemma said. ‘He knows who I am, he knows the year we’re in if not the month...he’s doing really well,’ she said as she examined her friend. ‘As are you.’

Cat found out then that she was already fully dilated.

‘Can you give me a push...?’

‘I don’t want to push.’

Oh, maybe she did.

‘I’m not ready to push.’

‘Yes, Cat, you are,’ Gemma said, and nodded to the midwife, who was busily getting equipment out.

‘Come on, Cat,’ Gemma urged, when she lay there, fighting her own body and refusing to bear down.

‘I can’t.’ She was starting to lose it. The lights were too bright, the voices too loud, and she’d never known pain like it. She wanted ten minutes to get used to the idea that her baby was on the way and when Gemma told her to push, right down into her bottom, she told her just what she could do with that notion.

‘Come on, Cat...’ Gemma’s voice, Cat noticed for the first time, was really annoying. ‘You can do this...’

‘I can’t,’ she said.

She was scared to push, as scared as she had been the last time, but then Dominic spoke.

‘Yes, you can,’ he said, and she was about to argue when his lovely deep voice spoke on. ‘You’ve done this before, Cat, you know what to do.’

He let Thomas in.

All the fear she’d had the last time, fear she still held on to, left, and she started to push her baby into the world.

She’d done this before, she had been a mother for seven years, just a lost one, but now the world was turning that around.

Gemma moved one leg back and Dominic the other. ‘Just getting a better angle for the live-stream to my parents,’ Dominic said, and that made her laugh.

‘Come on, Cat...’ Gemma said, and her voice wasn’t annoying any more. ‘Hold it...’

And there was a silence, a pause, and then she arrived. A little scrawny thing, very red and with a mass of black hair, she lay on Cat’s stomach too stunned to cry, her little mouth open, her eyes screwed closed.

‘Hey, kitten,’ Dominic said.

‘Don’t,’ Cat said. ‘That’s cheesy...’

But Cat and Dominic’s kitten she was. Tiny and mewing and there, ready or not.

Dominic cut the cord and Cat just lay there, gazing down at her tiny, perfect baby and her funny-shaped head, little dark red lips. She had never been happier or sadder at the same time, because this was how it should be.

‘It’s okay...’ Gemma was there when Cat folded. She’d known it was coming and she wrapped up her daughter and handed her to her dad, who had to juggle the two loves of his life. One arm full of baby, the other full of Cat as she cried for Thomas.

It was such a cry, one she had been dreading and the reason she hadn’t wanted him near her for the birth. The midwife took away their daughter for a little while and Gemma disappeared and she was alone with her heart and with him until the grief that would be present for ever faded enough to let life in.

Somehow they coexisted.

‘Thank God I told you,’ Cat said, because she couldn’t imagine him not being here, not just for himself or their baby but for her.

‘That’s how I felt when I told you,’ he admitted. ‘Just relief.’

‘Where is she?’ Cat asked, when she peered out from the shield he had provided and wanted her little girl.

‘Do you want her back in?’

She did.

Cat fed her for the first time and it soothed not just the baby but the baby’s mum.

The midwife left and Gemma went to write up her notes and then it was the three of them.

‘What are we going to call her?’ Cat asked.

‘I’ve no idea,’ Dominic said.

For now she was Baby Hayes.

He didn’t much like that.

When she finished feeding Cat handed their little daughter to her dad and she watched as he held her. She saw his expression falter and she knew that Heather was on his mind.

It didn’t threaten her, not a bit. She knew he wasn’t thinking that he wished Cat was Heather, more that Heather should have got to know this bliss.

‘She’d be so proud of you,’ Cat said, and let the other love in his life in, just as he had with Thomas.

‘She would be,’ he agreed, because Heather had known what a closed-off bastard he was and how long it had taken him to even commit to getting engaged. Yet here he was a dad and in love, not just with his baby but with the woman who’d given birth to her. Yes, she’d be so proud of him for pushing through, for showing up to each day and having the guts to fall in love again while knowing more than most just how much it could hurt.

Gemma came back in for a last-minute check before she headed back to visit Nigel.

‘She’s beautiful,’ Gemma said. ‘Just so gorgeous. I think I need to have another baby.’

‘Don’t tell Nigel that yet.’ Cat smiled as her best friend got to hold her tiny daughter. ‘You want to keep his blood pressure down.’

‘I went over and told him you’d had a little girl and he smiled and said, “That’s good.” I’m starting to really think that he’ll be okay.’

‘Go and be with him,’ Cat said. ‘Thank you for being here today.’

‘I couldn’t not be,’ Gemma said. ‘I’m hardly going to miss out on delivering my own goddaughter...’

‘Er... Gemma...’ Cat said, and looked at Dominic. ‘We haven’t quite got around to discussing religion yet.’

‘I don’t even know how old Cat is,’ Dominic said, and peered at Cat’s observation chart and saw her date of birth. ‘You’re two years older than me!’

‘Oh.’ Gemma pouted, her doctor’s hat clearly well and truly off. ‘Well, bear me in mind when you do get around to it.’

‘Tell you what,’ Dominic said, ‘if you can’t be godmother, how about you be bridesmaid?’

‘Really?’ Gemma beamed.

‘Well, I have to ask her,’ Dominic said, ‘and then she has to say yes...’

‘You’d better,’ Gemma said, and handed back the baby, and when she’d gone Cat turned to Dominic.

‘You don’t have to marry me.’

‘I know that I don’t but I want to.’

‘She can have your surname if that’s what you want.’ But, no, from the way Dominic was looking at her Cat was starting to realise that he loved her.

‘I want you to have my name.’

‘Not professionally, though,’ Cat checked.

‘Oh, yes,’ Dominic said. ‘I want my name on everything.’

‘You are so completely not my type.’

‘Well, you’re not mine either,’ he admitted. ‘You stood outside that elevator in your lovely floaty dress, with your girlie curly hair, all blushing, shy and nervous...’

‘Is that your type?’

‘It was for a while.’

‘Well, for your information, I wasn’t shy and I wasn’t nervous.’