The Doctor & the Runaway Heiress

help us. You said in your email…’

He glanced behind his daughter again, and discovered he was searching for Pippa in the crowd. She’d gone.

He was alone with his unknown daughter. And her boyfriend. And their baby?

Their baby. His grandchild?

‘Of course I will,’ he said manfully, and he took his daughter’s trolley and summoned the most reassuring smile he was capable of. Which didn’t feel to him like it was all that reassuring. ‘We need to find a car-or maybe a small bus-and head back to Whale Cove. That’s where I live. But first there’s someone I’d like you to meet. I have a feeling you’re going to like her.’ He paused and thought about it. ‘I have a feeling we’re all going to need her.’

Pippa had headed out to the airport pharmacy to replenish her nappy supply. She needed to get her head around supplying an air ambulance; this was an oversight unworthy of a trained midwife but two days’ worth of nappies had slipped from her radar. Maybe she’d been thinking of other things.

Like Riley.

So she’d slipped out to buy nappies, she’d passed the arrivals hall and she’d seen Riley meet his daughter. His pregnant daughter.

He looked like he was drowning.

Riley was a man who walked alone-she knew that. You couldn’t be near the man without sensing his reserve. And now… he’d been thrown in at the deep end.

He’d be a grandfather.

She almost chuckled, but she didn’t.

She bought what she needed, then hesitated before returning to Amy, taking a moment to try and get her thoughts in order.

Riley.

Last night she’d needed him. She’d clung and he’d held. He’d made love to her and she’d lost herself in his body. He’d lifted her out of her nightmare, and in doing so he’d settled her world. She’d woken this morning feeling that all was right with her world, that she was on a path for life.

With Riley?

No. That was dumb. One night of love-making could never make a permanent relationship. But he’d made her feel wonderful, alive, young, free.

All the things he no longer was. His face just then… He had a pregnant daughter and her heart twisted for him.

She’d seen him holding a daughter he’d never met before. A teenager, bearing his grandchild.

He wouldn’t walk away. She knew that about him, truly and surely. He was a man of honour, Riley Chase.

And with that… another twist.

He was so different from Roger. So different from any man she’d ever met. She felt… she felt…

She wasn’t allowed to feel. Riley had so many complications, the last thing he needed was her throwing her heart into the ring.

She couldn’t. She didn’t.

Nappies.

She headed back to Amy, her arms full of nappies, her head full of resolutions. Keep cool and professional. Never be needy again. Support him from the sidelines.

So why was the look on his face as he’d held his daughter etched onto her heart?

Why did her heart still twist?

He hired a family wagon. A seven-seater. Three rows of seats.

The luggage filled the trunk to overflowing. Lucy and Adam didn’t travel light. Neither did Amy-babies needed stuff.

Amy was in the back seat, with Baby Riley strapped in beside her.

Adam and Lucy were in the middle seat, holding each other like they were glued.

Pippa was in the front passenger seat next to Riley.

Mum and Dad in the front seat, kids in the back.

Riley was looking… cornered.

She thought back to the evening before, to this same man calmly attempting surgery that was complex and risky. He’d worked through challenges single-mindedly. There was no one she’d rather have around her in a crisis than Riley Chase and that wasn’t just because he’d hauled her out of the water. It wasn’t just that he’d saved her life.

She’d slept with him last night. It had shifted their relationship to a different level. It could never return again.

Forget last night. She told herself that harshly, but she knew she never could. Somehow she had to move past it, though, to immediate need.

From living on his own, Riley was now faced with living with her, with Amy and her baby, and with his daughter and boyfriend. She thought of his lovely quiet existence and tried to think how she’d feel landed with what he’d been landed with.

Hey. She actually had been landed with it. She, too, was a loner. An only child. A kid who’d learned to like her own company. A woman who’d been independent, whose engagement to Roger had probably lasted as long as it had because she was so independent.

She, too, would be in Riley’s house. She was part of Riley’s problem-but he was part of hers.

He’d have a bedroom close by hers. That might be a problem all by itself. She needed to put a lid on her hormones.

So what to do?

She was stuck in Riley’s house. She’d promised Amy she’d be there.

Riley was stuck as well. Amy needed him to be there.

Riley needed space.

Maybe…

She swivelled. Lucy and Adam could scarcely be any closer. They truly were scared kids.

They had a whole lot facing them, she thought. A baby within weeks. A new country. A future to work out.

A relationship to forge with Riley.

They all needed space.

‘Is the house set up for Lucy and Adam?’ she asked, loud enough to talk to the car in general.

‘Sorry?’ Riley seemed a hundred miles away.

‘The house,’ she said patiently. ‘The housekeeper’s expecting me on Sunday. She’s expecting Lucy today but as far as I can figure, she’s expecting a lone Lucy. And she’s not expecting Amy. So apart from your room, do we have three more bedrooms-with a single bed apiece?’

‘Yes,’ Riley said cautiously, not sure where she was going. ‘But we can move in a stretcher bed for Adam.’

‘A stretcher,’ she said disparagingly. ‘Lucy, Adam, you guys look really tired.’

‘We didn’t sleep on the plane,’ Lucy admitted.

‘So all you want to do is sleep, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I have a suggestion,’ Pippa told her. ‘For reasons too complicated to go into right now, we also have one luxurious honeymoon suite in a swish hotel ten minutes’ walk away from our house. The suite’s paid for until Sunday. Would it make sense if you, Lucy and Adam, had the honeymoon suite until we can set the house up with more beds?’

Silence.

She’d interfered in something that was none of her business, she thought, but this could give Riley space to come to terms with what was happening. And it obviously had its attractions for the scared kids.

‘A honeymoon suite,’ Lucy breathed.

‘King-sized bed. Room service. A bath so big you can swim in it.’

‘Compared to a single bed?’

‘Hey, it’s a pink single bed,’ Riley said, sounding affronted.