Page 3 of Prognosis Baby Daddy

Ben couldn’t help himself, he roared with laughter. His mother was an old-fashioned woman, had raised her children with traditional values. She thought premarital sex was a sin. ‘You have nothing to fear there, Katya.’

‘Good,’ said Katya, and turned to gaze out of her window.

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Ben concentrated onhis driving, navigating his way out of Rome easily. He had spent a lot of his years in the capital and knew it well. His family had residences in Rome and Florence and he had split his formative years between the two.

He took the autostrada exit to Naples and the Amalfi coast. His mother preferred the gentler climate of southern Italy, and the Positano villa had been her permanent home for five years now. For many years it had been his favourite place in all of Italy but too much had happened there and when he had left a decade ago he had sworn to never return.

But the Lucia Clinic was there. His duty was there.

He glanced at Katya’s profile. She appeared to be engrossed in the scenery and he took the opportunity to study her. She was dressed casually in hipster jeans. They were snug-fitting rather than tight, emphasising her slender thighs. Her white, short-sleeved shirt looked cool, the top few buttons undone, revealing a hint of cleavage.

Funny...he’d seen her almost every day for a year and yet had rarely seen her in civvies. In his mind, when he pictured her, which he did a little too often for his own sanity, it was as she’d been that last night.

Gloriously naked, her body slick with sweat, her blue eyes wide and dazed with passion. He remembered the bite of her nails into his buttocks, the nip of her teeth into his shoulder, the gasps of pleasure from her mouth.

To say he’d been surprised to take her call a few weeks ago was an understatement. After the way they’d parted, the way he’d acted after such an amazing night, it had hardly been his brightest moment.

Is that job offer still open?

Ben had been so delighted to hear her accented English, so relieved that she was still talking to him after his morning-after bungle, that he had said, of course. In honesty, he’d missed her. Missed her frankness. Her cute accent. Her aloofness. She was the only woman he’d ever met who could turn him on through pure indifference.

In typical Katya fashion, she hadn’t gone into detail about her reasons on the phone. She hadn’t explained why she was now doing the very thing she’d told him she wouldn’t.

I’d rather drink bad vodka.That’s what she’d told him that last morning together when he’d suggested she come and work at the clinic.

So why had she changed her mind? He had to admit to being a little more than curious. Perhaps she needed the money for some reason? The Lucia Clinic certainly paid its staff well. MedSurg, on the other hand, the charitable organisation they had both been employed by, while incredible to work for, did not.

But, then, no one joined its ranks to get rich. MedSurg involved a higher ideal. And Katya had been committed to staying on with them — forever. Apparently.

So something had come up to change her mind.

Wanting a change in career direction was what she’d told him on the phone. But he knew that was a lie. What were the words she had used when she’d first realised his family owned the world-renowned Clinic?

A place where rich vain people desperately trying to hold onto their youth were pandered to.

Or words to that effect anyway. He smiled to himself then risked a glance at her only to be caught out.

‘Shouldn’t you be watching where you’re going?’ she demanded piercing him with a disapproving glare.

Ben just smiled and returned his attention to the road.

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Not even as the densehousing of Rome fell away and Italian countryside surrounded them could Katya ignore the weight of his frequent stare. She’d been hyper-aware of him the minute she had spotted him, half-hidden behind the largest bouquet she had ever seen. She had hoped that their time apart would have put her attraction into perspective but, if anything, it seemed to be stronger.

It was the clothes, she decided. Although he filled out a pair of scrubs magnificently, it was nothing to how he looked dressed as Italian nobility. Everything about him screamed money. The cut of his trousers. The way the fabric of his shirt draped across the breadth of his shoulders and moulded to his chest, emphasising his six-foot-plus frame. The soft leather of his expensive shoes.

Who had said clothes maketh the man had been right. In scrubs she’d been able to make believe he was just Ben. Gorgeous, flirtatious, persistent, annoying Ben. Ben the surgeon.

That Ben had been relatively easy to ignore.

But in his civvies he looked...regal. Aristocratic. Like Count Benedetto Medici. Rich as sin. Hotshot plastic surgeon.

Katya knew she would find this Ben far from easy to dismiss.

Knew she couldn’t afford to. Knew she had to get to know him. Get behind the façade, behind the clothes. Find the man she’d made love to three months ago, if indeed he actually existed, or whether he’d just been a temporary aberration in an extraordinary set of circumstances.

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