Yuletide Baby Surprise (Billionaires And Babies #38)(41)
Author: Catherine Mann

What had she done for him?

Nothing.

She’d simply demanded her expectations for him rather than accepting him as he was. He’d accepted and appreciated her long before a ball gown. Even when he disagreed with her, he’d respected her opinion.

Damn it all, she was smarter than this. Of course Rowan had built walls around himself. Every person in his family had let him down—his parents and his brother. None of them had ever put him or his well-being first. Sure, he’d made friends with his schoolmates, but he’d even admitted to feeling different from them.

Now she’d let him down, as well. He’d reached out to her as best he could and she’d told him what he offered wasn’t good enough, maybe because she’d been scared of not being enough for him.

But she knew better than that now. A confidence flowed through her like a calming breeze blowing in off the ocean. With that calm came the surety of what to do next.

It was time to fight for the man she loved, a man she loved for his every saintly imperfection.

* * *

Rowan had always been glad to return to his clinic on the mainland. He’d spent every Christmas here in surgical scrubs taking care of patients since moving to Africa. He welcomed the work, leaving holiday celebrations to people with families.

Yet, for some reason, the CD of Christmas carols and a pre-lit tree in the corner didn’t stir much in the way of festive feelings this year. A few gifts remained for the patients still in the hospital, the other presents having been passed out earlier, each box a reminder of shopping with Mari.

So he buried himself in work.

Phone tucked under his chin, he listened to Elliot’s positive update on Issa, followed by a rambling recounting of his Australian Christmas vacation. Rowan cranked back in a chair behind his desk, scanning a computer file record on a new mother and infant due to be discharged first thing in the morning.

One wing of the facility held a thirty-bed hospital unit and the other wing housed a clinic. Not overly large, but all top-of-the-line and designed for efficiency. They doled out anything from vaccinations to prenatal care to HIV/AIDS treatment.

The most gut-wrenching of all? The patients who came for both prenatal care and HIV treatment. There was a desperate need here and he couldn’t help everyone, but one at a time, he was doing his damnedest.

The antibacterial scent saturated each breath he took. Two nurses chatted with another doctor at the station across the hall. Other than that, the place was quiet as a church mouse this late at night.

“Elliot, if you’ve got a point here, make it. I’ve got a Christmas Eve dinner to eat.”

Really, just a plate to warm in the microwave but he wasn’t particularly hungry anyhow. Visions of Mari in that red gown, cloaked in total confidence, still haunted his every waking and sleeping thought. He’d meant what he’d said when he told her it didn’t matter to him what clothes she wore. But he was damn proud of the peace she seemed to have found with being in the spotlight. Too bad he couldn’t really be a part of it.

“Ah, Rowan, I really thought you were smarter than me, brother,” Elliot teased over the phone from his Australian holiday. The background echoed with drunken carolers belting out a raucous version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

“As I recall, our grades were fairly on par with each other back in the day.”

“Sure, but I’ve had about four concussions since then, not to mention getting set on fire.”

A reluctant smile tugged at Rowan. “Your point?”

“Why in the hell did you let that woman go?” Elliot asked, the sounds of laughter and splashing behind him. “You’re clearly crazy about her and she’s nuts about you. And the chemistry… Every time you looked at each other, it was all I could do not to shout at you two to get a room.”

“She doesn’t want me in her life.” The slice of her rejection still cut so much deeper than any other.

“Did she tell you that?”

“Very clearly,” he said tightly, not enjoying in the least reliving the moment. “I think her words were along the lines of ‘have a nice life.’”

“You’ve never been particularly self-aware.”

He winced, closing down the computer file on his new maternity patient. “That’s what she said.”

“So are you going to continue to be a miserable ass or are you going to go out and meet Mari at the clinic gate?”

At the gate? He creaked upright in his chair, swinging his feet to the floor. “What the hell are you talking about? You’re in Australia.”

But he stormed over to look out his office window anyway.

“Sure, but you tasked me with her security and I figured some follow-up was in order. I’ve been keeping track of her with a combo of guards and a good old-fashioned GPS on her rental car. If my satellite connection is any good, she should be arriving right about…now.”

Rowan spotted an SUV rounding the corner into sight, headlights sweeping the road as the vehicle drove toward the clinic. Could it really be Mari? Here? Suddenly, Elliot’s call made perfect sense. He’d been stringing Rowan along on the line until just the right moment.

“And Rowan,” Elliot continued, “be sure you’re the one to say the whole ‘love you’ part first since she came to you. Merry Christmas, brother.”

Love her?

Of course he loved her. Wanted her. Admired her. Desired her. Always had, and why he hadn’t thought to tell her before now was incomprehensible to him. Thank God for his friends, who knew him well enough to boot him in the tail when he needed that nudge most.

Thank God for Mari, who hadn’t given up on him. She challenged him. Disagreed with him. But yet here she was, for him.

The line disconnected as he was already out the door and sprinting down the hall, hand over his pager to keep it from dislodging from his scrubs in his haste. His gym shoes squeaked against the tiles as he turned the corner and burst out through the front door, into the starlit night. The brisk wind rippled his surgical scrubs.

The tan SUV parked beside the clinic’s ambulance under a sprawling shea butter tree. The vehicle’s dome light flicked on, and Merry Christmas to him, he saw Mari’s beautiful face inside. She stepped out, one incredibly long leg at a time, wearing flowing silk pants and a tunic. The fabric glided along her skin the way his hands ached to do again.

Her appearance here gave him the first hope in nearly a week that he would get to do just that.