The Pregnancy Project

And what was it—if not chemistry—that had made him ignore that simple gesture from her in the first place? he asked himself. He would have shaken any other patient’s hand. But when it came to Ella Gardner there had been something about her from the instant he’d set eyes on her that had knocked him off-kilter and his instinctive response to that had been to keep his distance, to be even more formal, more remote and removed than usual.

He didn’t understand it. He hadn’t understood it when it had happened. And true to form, he’d retreated into that attitude that had gotten him through the earlier part of his life. That bad attitude from which he’d recently faced some old repercussions.

But a doctor just couldn’t have…

What exactly was it that he had for Ella Gardner? he asked himself. Stirrings? Attraction? Some kind of unaccountable infatuation?

He didn’t know what it was or what to call it.

But whatever it was that he’d had, a doctor just couldn’t have it for a patient.

And she was a patient.

Okay, yes, it could be argued that for now she wasn’t his patient. That during the course of treatment she would be Kim Schwartz’s patient, that he wouldn’t so much as examine her until after the alternative course was finished and he began the in vitro procedures. It could be argued that only then would Ella Gardner be his patient.

But he was splitting hairs and he knew it. Basically she was still a patient—or at least a patient-in-waiting. And he didn’t get personally involved with patients or with patients-in-waiting.

Hell, he didn’t get personally involved with anyone.

And that was how he liked it. How he liked his life. No personal involvements meant no complications. It meant no encumbrances. No expectations. No disappointments. Uninvolved and unattached—that was how he made sure to keep himself, focusing on his work and solely on his work. That was the way it had always been, and that was the way he wanted it to stay. The way he intended to make sure it stayed. Which was why he never let any woman get too close or stick around too long.

“So vacate the premises of my brain, Ella Gardner,” he muttered under his breath, through clenched teeth.

The sound of his voice was enough to distract Champ from the rubber duck, and she did her springy little run over to him and promptly began a tug-of-war with his big toe. Which she could barely open her mouth wide enough to accommodate.

Her pin-sharp teeth hurt some, but still her struggle made Jacob laugh. He leaned forward and picked up the pup again to take her inside.

“Patients and puppies—sometimes you’re both pains in my neck,” he told Champ.

But he still held the tiny dog to his face, rubbing his nose in the downy fur behind one of her ears.

And in spite of all his determination to put Ella Gardner firmly out of his mind, he also still found himself—entirely against his will—looking forward to having dinner with her tonight more than he should have.

And way, way more than he wanted to.

Chapter Three

“T his is Jacob Weber. I’ve had a patient emergency this afternoon and am running behind schedule. You’ll have to meet me at my office rather than at the hotel and wait for me to finish with my other appointments today. We may or may not be eating, depending on the time left before my meeting, but I’ll make sure to run you through the orientation, even if it’s on the fly. Unless, of course, you aren’t here when I finish for the day, and then I’ll assume you’ve had second thoughts about this course.”

Ella played the message a second time, shaking her head as she listened again. She was amazed by the doctor’s curt, verging-on-rude demeanor even on the telephone. Although she supposed she should give him points for making the phone call himself, for not merely having his receptionist do it.

On the other hand, as Ella played the message a third time, she thought that he might be better off having his receptionist relay his messages. At least Bev was nice.

But Ella reminded herself that Jacob Weber was the best there was when it came to infertility, so she would just have to overlook his rotten social skills to be treated by him.

It was a shame, though, she couldn’t help thinking. Because as the deep, rich tones of his voice wafted over the line for the fourth run-through of the message, the image of him spontaneously presented itself to her mind’s eye—the way it had about a million times since she’d met him. It was a shame that someone with the face of a Greek god, someone with broad shoulders and smoldering nearly purple eyes, someone who exuded a raw, steamy sexuality that he didn’t even seem aware of, had a gargoyle’s personality. Without that he would have been a powerhouse of a man, whom no woman could resist.

Then again, maybe for her own sake it was good that he was so unlikable. Because if she was playing his phone message four times just to hear his voice and thinking yet again how great looking and sexy he was, she’d better have something that tempered what otherwise might seem like an attraction to him.

But of course she wasn’t attracted to him. Continuing to think about how jaw-droppingly handsome he was was just like recalling an awesome winter sunset—it might be something to behold but only from the warm safety of a house where fierce winds blowing outside couldn’t get in.

No, there was no way she was attracted to Jacob Weber. She needed his professional services, his talents, skills and experience as a doctor and that was all. Being attracted to him amidst that—coupled with his contrary, irritable, arrogant temperament—would be very, very bad. It was the absolute last thing she needed. Or wanted.

Still, she played the message a fifth time, telling herself it was for its supercilious, overbearing tone, and the turnoff that provided. That it was not for the sound of the polished-mahogany voice that delivered it.

Then she made herself hang up the phone.

A woman would have to be crazy or masochistic to put up with a man like that in any kind of personal relationship, she asserted to herself. And she wasn’t crazy. Or masochistic. Or looking for a new relationship with any man, let alone one like Jacob Weber.

A single marriage that had demanded too long a period of suppressing her own needs and desires, a marriage in which she’d allowed herself to be controlled, was enough for her. She certainly didn’t need to top it off with someone like the unpleasant doctor.

“No, thanks,” she said out loud as she went into her bedroom to change out of her business suit.

“Just do your job and do it well, and I’ll be only too happy never to have to see you again.” She went on talking to the unseen Jacob Weber as she put on a pair of gray slacks and a white camp shirt for her second encounter with the prickly physician.

And hopefully it wouldn’t take too long to accomplish the feat of getting her pregnant, she added silently, fighting against the ever-present fear that it wouldn’t happen at all. Because the less time she had to spend with the man and tolerate his pomposity, the better.

“I’ll be glad when you’re nothing but a bad memory,” she proclaimed as she scrunched the curly explosion of her hair above the rubber band that held it at her crown and retraced her steps out of her bedroom and then out of her apartment.

And that’s all he’d be, too, she assured herself as she left the building and got into her car to drive to Jacob Weber’s office. “Nothing but a bad, bad memory,” she repeated forcefully.

Yet somewhere buried deep beneath that bravado lurked a tiny shadow of doubt.

A tiny shadow of doubt born of the fact that every time she thought about seeing the gargoyle in a Greek god’s body again she felt a twinge of excitement….

“He’s right behind me, I promise,” Marta said to Ella as the nurse came through the door from the inner office into the waiting room where Ella had been sitting for over an hour.

“Okay,” Ella answered, hoping the woman was right but unsure whether to believe it or not since Bev, the receptionist, had told her the doctor would be out after the last patient had left forty minutes ago and then repeated it when she’d left herself twenty minutes earlier.

Marta gave her a reassuring smile, said good-night, and went out.

The longer Ella sat there, the more difficult it was to avoid what she considered her pregnancy demons. The thoughts—the doubts—that crept into her mind when she wasn’t guarding against them or when she had too much time on her hands.

What if nothing worked and she never got pregnant? What if all the money, all the effort, all the pain came to naught? What if she spent her entire life childless?

The questions tortured her and, as if she’d outrun them, she stood and forced herself to focus only on the present. On the fact that Jacob Weber was keeping her waiting.

Clearly the office ran on his timetable, and he wouldn’t be rushed. For anyone. Certainly not for her.

Ella decided to take a stroll around the waiting room, pausing to look more closely at the framed prints on the walls, to straighten the magazines on the coffee table, to pluck a dead leaf from the fern and bury it in the soil around its roots. And all the while she wondered if Jacob Weber was making her cool her heels on purpose. Just to be contrary. Or as some kind of test.

Then, through the cut-out that connected the receptionist’s area with the waiting room she saw the light in the hallway that ran between the examining rooms turn off, and she felt encouraged.

At least she did until she caught sight of the man himself opening the door to what looked like a supply closet.

Without any acknowledgment of her, or any apparent awareness that she was even out there, he slipped inside the closet and closed the door behind him.

He probably put counting cotton balls ahead of meeting with her, she thought, feeling a little surly after all the time she’d been waiting.