Prognosis Baby Daddy - Amy Andrews Page 0,10

surgery clinic but seeing it in reality hammered it home. It was hard to believe that someone who had worked in war zones could ever consider pandering to such vanity worthwhile.

Ben easily read the distaste on Katya’s face. He remembered his first day at the clinic, shaking his head in disbelief, too. ‘Would you like to see the gardens?’ he asked.

‘Sure,’ Katya said vaguely.

They wandered back through the building, Katya dazed from the opulence all around her. No expense had been spared anywhere. From the fittings to the surgical equipment, everything was high quality, top notch, the best that money could buy.

It was a little sickening, actually. How many people could MedSurg and aid organisations like it help if they had this sort of money at their disposal?

Ben took her through one of the private suites that was empty and pushed open the doors onto a small balcony. Katya’s breath caught in her throat as the magnificence of the view hit her. The grounds below had been terraced down the side of the hill and beautiful gardens adorned the rocky slope. Fountains and water features and lush greenery punctuated by colourful blooms, dazzled the eye.

And beyond the grounds was the endless blue of the Mediterranean. It sparkled in the mid-September sunshine like a beautiful priceless sapphire. The craggy cliffs dominating the coastline were breathtaking in their enormity, towering high into the sky and plunging in weathered splendour to the sea.

Katya looked either side of her. Each suite had its own balcony and she was hard pressed to think of a more beautiful place to recover from surgery. It was a stark contrast to her MedSurg job where patients too often recovered in cramped, less than ideal conditions.

‘This villa is centuries old, as are many of the buildings around here,’ said Ben. ‘Ravello is famous for its villas and their beautiful gardens. Many Hollywood films were filmed here back in the early nineteen hundreds and there are regular chamber music concerts held throughout the village during the year.’

‘It’s amazing,’ she said, the sheer beauty holding her in awe, the decadence overwhelming.

Ben heard a hesitant note in her voice. ‘You don’t sound so sure?’

‘No, it’s...it’s...wow.’

‘Sounds like there’s a but there.’ And he knew exactly what it was.

Katya shrugged. Her poor-as-dirt background and some of the horrors she had seen working with MedSurg made it difficult to reconcile the indulgences of the affluent. ‘I was just thinking how different it is from some of the places I’ve been with MedSurg.’

He nodded. ‘That it is.’

Katya blinked at his understatement. It seemed so flippant when she knew, as did he, there were people out there who couldn’t get proper health care at all.

‘Don’t you think all this is a little obscene?’ She felt nauseated suddenly by it all and wondered if she could truly let her baby be brought up by someone who couldn’t see how indulgent it was.

Sure, she wanted her baby to be provided for, to have the stuff she never had, but she also wanted it to have a sense of humanity. She had thought as Ben had worked for MedSurg that he had that kind of compassion, but if he could come back to this and not feel tainted by the excess then maybe she was wrong.

Ben could feel his ire beginning to rise again. She was doing it again. Judging him. It hadn’t mattered so much at MedSurg, his wealth had irritated her and he had exploited that role to the hilt because she had looked so cute when she’d been mad. But things had changed since then and her assumptions annoyed him.

‘You don’t approve of vanity?’

Katya schooled her features. Obviously she was letting her distaste show. ‘I think all the bad stuff happening in the world is more important than whether your nose is too big or your tummy too fat.’ She tried to keep the bluntness out of her voice but on this subject her passion ran deep.

Ben couldn’t agree more. ‘And yet you rang and asked me for a job. You knew what we do here. Why did you come if it was going to offend your sensibilities?’

His question caught her unawares. She wasn’t ready to open up yet. Oh, God, how could she say, Because I’m having your baby and I need to check out if you’re worthy of raising it because I’m certainly not.

‘I told you, I want to change direction.’

‘You? Leave MedSurg? I don’t believe it.’

Neither did she! And as soon as this was