Prognosis Baby Daddy - Amy Andrews Page 0,50

week, the baby pulled rank. Followed closely by Ben. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked her quietly at the end of a particularly long day.

He’d noticed her rocking on her heels quite a lot throughout the long operation and moving from foot to foot. He was repairing a severe burns contracture of the face and neck. The ten-year-old boy had sustained his initial injury through a kerosene explosion several months before and inadequate treatment had led to the current grotesque disfigurement.

The contractures involved the eyelids, face, neck and chest, the resulting downward pull leading to the boy’s inability to shut his eyes or mouth. There was a fixed flexion deformity of the neck so that his chin was sitting against his chest, with the front of his neck not visible at all. Looking at the poor boy it was as if his skin had melted from his face and fused his head to his chest.

So it was a big repair job, involving skin grafting and complicated by difficulty gaining and maintaining anaesthesia. Four hours in, Katya’s back ached, her legs ached, she was starving and exceedingly light-headed.

‘I’m fine,’ she dismissed, knowing that they were on the downhill run and she could sit and eat something very soon.

They were stripping off their gowns fifteen minutes later, Ben chatting away excitedly about the op. He’d done a fantastic job and given a little boy back his face and neck. Katya could hear him vaguely, her rebelling stomach and a surge of nausea distracting her from his words.

Her ears started to ring and then she couldn’t hear him at all. She could see his mouth moving but the words were lost in the noise coming from inside her head. Her vision started to go next. Ben was shrinking before her eyes as a black fuzz slowly encroached on her field of sight. And then everything went black and she fell.

‘Katya? Katya!’ Ben caught her as she slumped against him. He gave her a shake and she flopped like a rag doll. He swore in Italian and swept her up into his arms. He strode down the corridor, past surprised staff, getting angrier with each footstep. He kicked the door to his office open and laid her down on the double sofa.

She murmured and he let out a pent-up breath, his heart hammering madly. ‘Katya?’ he said again.

Her eyes fluttered open and Ben was so relieved for a moment he wanted to kiss her instead of strangle her.

‘What happened?’ she asked, half sitting.

‘You fainted.’ He pulled a blood-pressure cuff out of a desk drawer, wrapped it around her arm and took a quick reading.

‘Eighty over thirty-five,’ he told her disgustedly.

Katya returned his told-you-so look with a baleful glare. ‘My blood sugar got a little low,’ she said, ripping the cuff off and sitting up. Her head swam for minute and she shut her eyes briefly, willing it to stop.

When she opened them Ben was looking at her with raised eyebrows. ‘What?’ she said crankily. ‘Pregnant women faint from time to time.’

Ben swore again in his native tongue. She’d scared the hell out of him. ‘I will not have you jeopardising this baby’s health because you want to be some kind of super-nurse.’

Ben’s blunt reminder that to him she was just a life-support system for their baby stung. But it was a good reminder to her foolish heart of her purpose here in Italy, which seemed to get more and more blurred the longer she stayed.

‘I am not giving up work,’ she said stubbornly.

‘Oh, yes, you are,’ he countered, rising from his crouched position to sit behind his desk.

‘You think if you sit behind that desk that it makes you more important? That I’ll suddenly realise you’re the Count and I’m the commoner and I’ll bow before you?’

Ben chuckled. Hardly! Katya was not like any other woman he’d ever known. Fawning and flattery just weren’t part of her persona. She had her own opinions and spoke her own mind. She’d certainly been a refreshing change in his life.

‘Would you?’

‘Not a chance.’

Ben chuckled again. It was good to see a glimpse of her prickliness. She had lost a lot of that edge to her personality over the weeks and it was reassuring to still see flashes of her old spark.

The Katya who had never given him an inch.

Too many women had hung on his every word once upon a time and he’d soaked it up. Even Bianca had been a major ego trip for him. Being with