by something that felt very much like … craving. It slid like a serpent through his gut and whispered.
Be a father.
Damn Evie and her independence. Her grand plans. Her happy to do it all. Lydia was right—he did have a choice. And he’d be damned if his son would grow up without a father.
Stable and committed trumped absent any day.
An hour later Evie was examining a patient’s foot in cubicle two when the curtain snapped back with a harsh screech. She blinked as Finn stood there, glaring at her with his laser gaze, looking all scruffy and shaggy and very, very determined.
‘I need to talk to you Dr Lockheart,’ he said. ‘Now, thank you.’
His imperious tone ticked her off even as her hormones demanded she swoon at his feet in a puddle of lust. Luckily the baby gave her a hefty kick, as if to remind her she had a backbone and to use it.
‘I’m busy,’ she said, smiling sweetly for the benefit of the elderly lady, who looked startled at his intrusion.
But not as startled as she was!
Finn smiled at the patient as he strode into the cubicle and put his hand under Evie’s elbow. ‘Important cardiac consult,’ he said to the grey-haired woman. ‘It won’t take a minute.’
‘Oh, of course, dear,’ the lady said. ‘Off you go. Hearts are more important than my silly broken toe.’
Finn smiled at her as he firmed his grip on Evie. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, pulling insistently against her resistance.
Once outside he dropped his hand and stalked down the corridor, naturally assuming she’d just follow him. Evie had a good mind to walk in the opposite direction and force him to come looking for her again but they did need to talk. In fact, she was a little surprised he was willing to do so this early. She’d assumed he’d be thinking about her little bombshell for a while longer.
Which meant he’d probably got her phone message.
So she followed him, glaring at his broad shoulders and the way his hair curled against his collar until both of them disappeared into the on-call room. She steeled herself, taking a moment before she entered. It had taken all her guts to make that phone call this morning when every cell in her body had been urging her to say the opposite.
But she’d meant it. She’d cope if he didn’t want a bar of them. It would hurt, but she’d cope.
She took a deep breath and pushed through the door. He was standing waiting for her on the opposite side, his arms folded impatiently across his chest.
‘You look awful,’ she said.
She’d seen Finn in varying states of disarray. Angry, inebriated, in pain, high on pain pills, in denial, unkempt and hungover.
This was about as hungover as she’d ever seen him.
‘Trust me, this is an improvement on a few hours ago.’
‘Did it help?’ she asked, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice but not really succeeding.
Finn shook his head. ‘Nope.’
Evie folded her hands across her chest. ‘I left a message on your machine this morning.’
Finn gave a curt nod. ‘I got it.’
‘Oh.’ Evie’s hand dropped automatically to her belly, feeling the hard round ball of her expanding uterus. A nurse that morning had joked that she was ‘looking preggers’ and Evie knew that her baggy scrubs weren’t going to help for much longer. ‘I mean it, Finn. I don’t need you to be part of this.’ I want you to, though, with every fibre of my being. ‘Plenty of kids grow up in single-parent families and they do just fine.’
Finn thought about his own dismal childhood. Plenty of kids didn’t do just fine as well. And although he’d always thought being a father was the last thing on earth he wanted, he suddenly realised that was wrong.
His child being fatherless was the last thing he wanted.
Didn’t his son deserve the very, very best? Everything that he hadn’t had and more? A happy, settled, normal family life? Two people who loved him living and working together to ensure that his life was perfect?
A father. And a mother.
And a puppy!
‘I think we should get married,’ he said.
Every molecule inside Evie froze for long seconds as his startling sentence filtered through into suddenly sluggish brain cells. ‘What?’ she asked faintly when she finally found her voice.
Finn wondered if he looked as shocked as she did at the words that had come from nowhere. They hadn’t been what he’d been planning to say when he’d practically dragged her into