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She closed her eyes against the brilliant power of the sun. As altruistic as she’d like to believe her work, as much as she hadn’t had any choice in the crazy hours her residency had demanded, she had a choice now. Surgeons had families. They made it work. Yes, having a baby put a dent in your career. No matter what the Pollyanna types liked to say, motherhood slowed your ascent up the ladder. She’d heard male doctors make comments in the surgeon’s lounge about dilettante mothers who didn’t take their careers seriously. There was a stigma about it in the still-chauvinistic surgical community.
But none of this changed the fact that she was pregnant now. She either brought this child up with Coburn in a loveless marriage based on sex or they negotiated joint custody and passed the child back and forth like a tennis match.
She grimaced. Neither sounded appealing. To live with Coburn knowing he would never love her the way he once had would tear her heart out. Treating her child like a pawn in their separate agendas seemed equally distressing. Unless she found a way to control her feelings. Unless, she expanded in an “aha” moment, she took her emotions out of the equation. Which would by definition mean no sex. Just a convenient partnership to bring up their child.
Not what Coburn had been envisioning, surely, by his speech on the plane. But the only way she could play this without ending up a victim of her feelings was to negate them.
She thought about what she’d said to him. About marrying again... Thought about how completely he had owned her just now when she had kissed him. There would never be a man like that for her again. He was right. You came across that once in a lifetime if you were lucky. She’d had her turn.
What clinched it for her finally was Coburn’s statement about giving their child a better emotional base than he’d had. She wanted that. She wanted her baby to grow up with parents who cared about his or her emotional well-being—parents who didn’t treat their offspring like a chess piece in the game of marriage. Parents who cared about more than what grades the child brought home or what school he or she got into.
Her eyes fluttered closed. In that, she and Coburn were united. Not a bad thing to devote your marriage to.
When the sun got too hot to take, she stood up and brushed the sand from her limbs. For the first time in a week since her doctor had uttered those momentous three words, she had clarity as she walked back along the beach. Her husband might not like her plan, but that was all that was on offer. He could take it or leave it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AS THE SUN dipped into the sea in a spectacular orange and crimson ending to a brutally hot day and the scents of the island descended over the cottage in a dozen different perfumes that stroked the senses, Coburn was just about to tell the cook his wife was feeling unwell and ask if she would take a tray up to her room when Diana appeared on the deck overlooking the water.
She had changed into one of the filmy, understated dresses Arthur Kent’s PA had left in her room for her, the fuchsia silk dress embroidered with tiny white flowers making her look delicate and untouchable. His eyes narrowed on her ultraslim figure. The dress was too big for her even though it was her usual size. She had lost weight. She had not been well, and that needed to stop for the sake of their baby. She would listen to reason.
He watched as she walked to the railing that overlooked the rolling waves and rested her elbows on the edge. Her back was ramrod straight, the haughty tilt of her head at a fighting angle. Was it that much of a bitter pill to come back to him for the sake of this baby? Was being with him that distasteful?
His lips compressed into a tight line as he clenched his hands by his sides. Until she’d left him in a move he could never have anticipated, he had always thought his rocky road with Diana would level out. That these were the hard years with them where they were finding their way and they would learn to compromise. He had been in a state of shock when she’d left, if the truth were to be known. He had expected her to come back to him as she always did when they fought, when she gave in to the inevitability that was them. But days had grown into weeks, and when he had finally called to end the standoff, she’d refused to speak to him.
His mouth curled in a grimace. His na?veté was staggering. The belief that if you loved someone enough you could overcome the differences that had ultimately pushed you oceans apart.
Something low and heavy stirred in his gut. He had tried so hard to put this woman out of his head. And still she tied him in knots.
