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‘Really?’ Now he couldn’t avert his eyes because, if she’d had a mastectomy, it wasn’t apparent. And he’d only flicked over the treatment plan—he hadn’t read it in detail. ‘Did you have a reconstruction?’
Her hands self-consciously stayed where they were. And under them she could feel the long-term results of her disease—full, soft breast on one side and a gap on the other side, currently filled with a pale pink silicone breast enhancer. ‘I meant to but, no, not yet,’ she murmured.
His brow crinkled. ‘So what stopped you?’ She was a beautiful young woman. It seemed strange she hadn’t completed her treatment and moved on to the next part of her life. Most young women he’d ever met, and it was only a few, who’d had breast cancer had had some kind of reconstruction done at a later date.
Amy ran her hands over her baby bulge. ‘I haven’t really had time to get around to it. But it’s in my plans.’
Lincoln’s eyes fell again to her stomach. His brain was working overtime, trying to remember dates. If she’d had a cancer diagnosis just after leaving the boat, then undergone surgery and treatment, could she have had five years cancer-free before falling pregnant?
No. It didn’t add up. According to his calculations she just fell short. Lots of physicians were wary about the effect pregnancy hormones could have on cancer cells. Was it really wise for her to be pregnant? What age was Amy? Thirty-two? She could have waited another year before doing this. Had someone pushed her into it?
He remembered the empty next-of-kin box in her notes and tried to pull his professional head back into place. ‘Do you have a husband? A boyfriend I can call for you?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s just me, Linc.’
The enormity of the words hit him. She was alone. And while one part of his heart wanted to suddenly break into song, he immediately felt angry. Who had left a woman like this, alone and pregnant, after she’d already been through breast cancer?
He stood up, his voice rising in pitch, ‘What do you mean, you’re alone? Where’s the baby’s father? Why isn’t he here with you?’
‘It’s just me,’ she repeated, the words almost whispered. Most days she was fine with this. Most days she was confident and sure of herself. Confident in her abilities to be a single parent and to stay on top of her previous diagnosis. But sometimes, just sometimes, particularly when someone made a comment around her, she realised the enormity of the task in front of her. If this baby was born prematurely then she might have to deal with a whole host of complications. How would she feel then? Would she still feel confident in her abilities?
Then there was Linc, standing in front of her and right now looking like her knight in shining armour. But what if he refused to help? What if, over the last six years, he’d met someone, fallen in love and now had a whole host of other responsibilities that meant he wouldn’t be comfortable helping her?
She raised her eyes to meet his. ‘What about you, Linc? Are you on your own, or are you playing happy families somewhere with a wife and a houseful of kids? Is there a real Mrs Adams?’
She held her breath. Why was this answer so important?
Linc looked momentarily thrown by the question. A flickering parade of a variety of short-term lovers passed in the blink of an eye, ending with an image of an irate brunette. He hesitated then answered, ‘No. There’s no Mrs Adams. It’s just me.’
Amy could almost feel the relief flush over her body. Then curiosity got the better of her. ‘So what happened? Did the playboy never meet his match? Haven’t you met Miss Right?’
The words hung in the air. She saw a flash of something in his eyes—was it annoyance? Linc looked uncomfortable, as if he didn’t know how to answer that question.
‘I thought I had. I was engaged a few years ago to girl called Polly, a pharmaceutical rep. We even had the wedding planned. But in the end it just didn’t feel right. So I had to end it.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘And it wasn’t pretty.’
Amy sat back in her chair. ‘What happened?’ She was fighting the horrible sensation that was creeping across her skin. Lincoln had been engaged. It made her feel sick.
‘I called it off just after we’d paid the deposit for the reception, the photographer and the cake. I came home to find my apartment cleared out and samples of wedding cake smeared into my suits.’
Amy’s eyes widened. ‘Wow. I guess you weren’t popular, then. The playboy struck out.’
He paused, stopping his mouth from saying the first words that came into his brain.
Amy Carson had shaken him to the core. He’d been a fool, with a playboy reputation that he hadn’t ever meant to earn. It had only been when she’d never come back that he’d realised how special she’d been.
She was joking, he could tell by her tone, but the playboy jibe had cut deeper than he liked, leaving him feeling distinctly ill at ease. It was too late at night for conversations like these. He looked at the half-eaten plate of food in front of her. ‘Do you want anything else?’
She shook her head and rubbed her hands across her stomach. ‘I don’t think I’ve got room for any more. Junior takes up more space in here than you think.’
‘Junior?’ He raised his eyebrow at her. ‘That’s what you’re calling your baby?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well, I know I’m having a boy and I have picked a name, but I want to wait until he’s here before I share it. So for the moment he’s Junior.’
Lincoln’s brow furrowed. ‘I’m kind of surprised you found out what you were having. I would have taken you for a surprise kind of girl. We used to call you Miss Unpredictable on the boat.’
‘You did?’ Her eyes widened. She’d never heard the nickname before and, what’s worse, it suited her—or at least it used to. She couldn’t afford to be unpredictable any more. Amy’s lips tightened. ‘I wanted to plan ahead. Decorate the room for the baby coming, pick him some clothes, buy a stroller.’ She stared off into the distance. ‘I always thought I’d want it to be a surprise too, but when the time came I had to have a few detailed scans and because I work in a hospital where they do maternity care I’m used to looking at scans—it was kind of hard to hide the obvious.’
Lincoln’s brow furrowed. ‘Why did you need detailed scans? Did they suspect a problem?’ He hadn’t seen anything in her notes that would have made him think there was something wrong with the baby.
Amy lifted her eyes to meet his and for the first time tonight he noticed how heavy they were. She was exhausted. She leaned her chin on her hands. ‘No. No problem. It’s just that the clinic where I had my IVF wanted to keep a close eye on me. My embryos had been frozen for five years and then there was a problem…’
‘What problem?’
She sighed. ‘I had been planning on using the embryos but I was going to wait until I was five years clear of disease and I’d had my reconstruction surgery.’
‘So what happened?’
‘The storage facilities were compromised.’ She lifted her hands. ‘We live on the San Andreas fault. Earthquakes are an occupational hazard.’
‘An earthquake? Surely any IVF storage facility made plans for that?’
‘Even the best plans can be compromised. The DEWAR tank containing my embryos developed a slow liquid nitrogen leak. Some of my embryos perished in the thawing process but I was lucky. A few good-quality embryos survived and I had to make a decision quickly about what I wanted to do.’
He gestured towards her stomach. ‘So you went ahead with implantation before you were ready?’
‘I had to, Lincoln. This was my only chance to have a child of my own.’ She leaned back in her chair again. Was it the conversation making her uncomfortable or was it something else? That was the third time she’d shifted position in as many minutes. She shrugged her shoulders, ‘I’m not really that dif
ferent from lots of other people who find themselves pregnant before they’d planned to be.’
He shook his head, ‘But you are different, Amy. You’ve got a completely different set of circumstances. You had a disease that threatened your life. This baby didn’t materialise out of thin air—or as the result of failed contraception.’
‘I know that, Linc.’ Her eyes clouded over. ‘You can’t possibly understand.’ Her voice lowered. ‘You can’t possibly know how it feels to have the world whipped out from under your feet. One minute you think you have your whole life to plan a family, to choose when you have it and with whom. Then the next minute you’re asked hard questions and you’ve got about two minutes to make up your mind—because they have to schedule surgery for you and a whole plan of chemotherapy. And in the meantime the clock is ticking because every second you delay could be the second that means your cancer grows and spreads somewhere it shouldn’t. The second that could be the difference between life and death for you.’
Lincoln drew in a deep breath. She was tired, he knew she was tired. It was two o’clock in the morning and she was sitting in a strange place, with symptoms that could affect her baby, and with someone she hadn’t seen in six years. So why did it feel as if someone had just fastened a thick fist around his heart and squeezed tightly? Why did the heart-wrenching words she’d just said make him feel as if his stomach had just turned inside out?
She fixed her green eyes on his. ‘This was it for me, Linc. This was my only chance to have a baby of my own—and even then there was no guarantee that the embryo would take. But I had to try. I couldn’t give up that one chance just because the timing wasn’t perfect.’
‘And the father?’ It was a loaded question, and the one he was most interested in.
She gave a rueful smile. ‘I didn’t have a significant other when I was diagnosed with breast cancer and I was advised to freeze embryos instead of eggs. So I used a sperm donor. What else could I do?’
A sperm donor. An anonymous man who would never know he was the father of Amy’s baby. Did that make him feel better or worse?
