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At least, that was the argument she told herself, and the one she was sticking with. After the two catastrophic attempts she’d made to contact him when he’d still been in Gaza, to tell him about the baby they had created together, she wasn’t about to admit out loud that some traitorous part of her secretly dreamed that Fate might intervene. That, in the silence of the night, a tiny, muffled voice challenged her to venture into the main hospital and find him.
Not that she had any idea what she would say to him. How she would even attempt to begin to explain the choices that she’d made. In her heart she knew everything she’d done had been for their baby—a miracle, given the deterioration in Evie’s kidney condition at the time of the pregnancy—but it didn’t make her feel good about herself.
And still.
She’d hardly been in a state to think clearly when she’d accepted the hush money. In a daze from her premature baby and her kidney failure, rushing between NICU and her dialysis sessions. So when Max’s parents—the people who should have their son’s best interests at heart—had told her that neither they, nor their son, would want anything to do with the baby, a fiercely protective new-mother instinct of her own had kicked in. She’d worked with enough troubled teens to know how damaging it could be when a child was unloved, unwanted. And she had her own painful experience of being left by her father, too.
Both she and Imogen deserved better than that. They deserved to be cherished, not made to feel like a burden. And so Evie had allowed herself to be persuaded it was in her precious baby’s best interests not to tell Max Van Berg he was a father.
But what if she’d been wrong? What if Max would have wanted to know about his daughter? Her head whirled with doubts, drowning out the sound of the double doors slamming open once again.
‘Evie?’
Goosebumps swept across her skin. She didn’t turn around; she couldn’t. The voice was painfully familiar and intensely masculine. It evoked a host of memories that Evie had spent a year trying unsuccessfully to bury. A prong of doubt speared her insides. Had she been wrong to believe he didn’t care? Because in that perfect moment Max actually sounded happy—albeit a little shocked—to see her.
She swallowed ineffectually, her mouth too parched, and her heart wasn’t so much beating in her chest as assaulting her chest wall. Whatever she’d imagined, she wasn’t mentally prepared for this but there was nothing else for it.
Steeling herself against the kick from the moment she laid eyes on Max again, Evie lifted her head boldly and completed a slow one-eighty.
She hadn’t steeled herself enough.
‘Max.’ She gritted her teeth, striving to sound calm. In control.
‘What are you doing here, Evie?’
There was still no trace of chilliness in his tone. Was that a good thing, or a bad one? It suggested he knew nothing about Imogen, so maybe there was still hope. But then again, it also meant he’d been happy with their fling and certainly hadn’t been thinking about her these last twelve months so the bombshell of a daughter wouldn’t be well received.
So she stayed silent and contented herself with drinking in the man she recalled so very intimately.
Time apart had done little to diminish the sheer physical presence he exuded and she was grateful for the few feet of space between them, acting as something of a safety buffer, both mentally and physically. But space couldn’t erase everything. The way Max looked and the authority he exuded. The feel of his skin beneath her hands and her body. The way he smelled—no overpowering aftershave for Max, but instead a faint, intoxicating masculine scent underpinned with a hint of lime basil shower gel she remembered only too well.
‘Are you working here again?’ he pushed.
‘No.’
Silence hung between them.
‘Evangeline, why are you here?’
She had to say something. She was standing in the middle of a dedicated transplant unit—she had to explain her visit somehow. So she settled for a half-truth.
‘My sister-in-law has some tests before her appointment with Mrs Goodwin,’ Evie started carefully, studying his face for any kind of reaction.
‘Arabella Goodwin?’ He frowned. ‘The nephrologist?’
‘That’s right,’ she confirmed slowly.
‘Is it serious?’
Evie searched his face; she needed to be careful here. Really be sure of herself before she said anything.
Admittedly, he seemed genuinely interested, but that meant nothing. This was the side of Max she knew, his sincere concern for his patients and their families. But it didn’t mean he wanted a family of his own. It just meant he was dedicated to his career.
Just as his parents had cruelly reminded her.
Just as they’d made her see that, for Max at least, their short-lived fling had been just that. It certainly hadn’t been the start of something. He hadn’t asked her to wait for him whilst he was away in Gaza. He hadn’t even told her that his parents were the renowned surgeons she had read about, attended guest speaker talks to see, studied, throughout her medical studies.
In short, they had shared five nights and four days of intense, unparalleled intimacy, yet told each other so very little about their lives beyond the bedroom.
