Читать книгу Hot Single Docs Collection - Lynne Marshall - Страница 23

JACK LOVED FRIDAYS.

He always had and he always would, but he was especially looking forward to this one.

Blake and Janey were off at summer camp and tonight he and Nina were flying to Hawaii for a delayed honeymoon. He walked up the garden path of their large Brooklyn home after a very full week working at the pro bono centre.

Nina had been right.

His rather more analytical mind had been exactly what the centre had needed and Jack was part of the team that allocated funds as well as running two night clinics a week, and he loved it.

Jack didn’t miss Angel’s. He was often there, consulting on a patient he’d had admitted or stopping by to take Nina for lunch.

‘How was work?’ Jack asked as Nina woke up from a doze, stretched on the sofa and yawned.

‘Exhausting,’ she admitted. ‘I think I got everything done before we go away, but the trouble with working part time is that you end up doing a full week’s work in half the time. Though it was a good day. I saw Tommy and Mike …’

‘And?’

‘Tommy’s finished his chemotherapy and the doctors are really pleased with the results.’

‘Is he having surgery?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Nina said. ‘I think there’s a big case meeting next week, but for now, at least, things are going better than expected.’

Everything was going better than expected.

Nina had been a Carter for a few months now, but as of this week so too were Janey and Blake. A few days after they’d announced they were getting married, Janey had flared up at something, and shouted that Jack had no say, that he was only her sister’s boyfriend, or her brother-in-law.

‘We’ll see about that!’ Jack had snapped back, and so earlier in the week they’d all stood in front of a judge who had smiled as broadly as all of them for the photo to capture the moment Jack officially became a father.

And now Nina had to somehow tell him that he was about to become a father again.

She didn’t know how she felt about it, had wanted to wait a while, but that option was closed to them now.

‘So,’ Jack said, ‘are we packed?’

‘I am.’ Nina smiled.

She followed him into their bedroom and he laughed when he opened the case because it contained two bikinis, a sarong and not much else. Jack threw in a couple of things too.

They would have their own very private pool and had no intention to leave its side.

‘It’s going to be nice to have some time on our own,’ Nina said, but Jack didn’t really comment. He loved the busy household they had made, loved doing sport with Blake and just having a childhood thirty years late. He knew she was fishing, knew Nina was waiting for him to admit it was too much at times.

He never did.

Still, there were some advantages to having the house to themselves, because he had her try on her new bikini and then had the pleasure of taking it off, and all without having to think and close the door, and afterwards, as his hands traced her body, he noticed the tiny changes, the slight fullness to her breasts, and he wondered when she was going to tell him.

‘We’d better get ready.’ He caught her as she went to get off the bed, and pulled her back to him.

‘When are you going to tell me?’

He watched the colour spread first on her cheeks and then down to her chest, watched her rapid, confused blink. ‘What?’

‘That I’m going to be a father of three?’ Jack smiled. ‘How long have you been holding out on me?’

‘Jack!’ she wailed in frustration. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. ‘I was going to tell you on holiday …’ She shook her head in exasperation. ‘I only found out this afternoon.’

‘I’ve known for a week.’ Jack grinned. ‘I thought you just weren’t telling me. I knew at the courtroom….

‘How?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘You can.’

‘I really can’t.’ Jack grinned. ‘Because you’ll accuse me of being a chauvinist.’

‘You are a chauvinist!’ Nina reminded him. ‘But I’m working on it.’ She didn’t understand. ‘How did you know before I did?’

‘You forget sometimes that you’re married to a brilliant diagnostician,’ Jack said. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you. Remember our case was pushed back, remember how that woman in the coffee shop pushed in line …?’

‘Yes.’ She was sulking before he said it.

‘And it was a tense day and I knew that your period was due, but you were lovely …’

‘Don’t!’ Nina dug him the ribs with her elbows. ‘Don’t you dare …’

‘I’m not,’ Jack said. ‘I’m just saying …’

And he was arrogant and rude and chauvinistic at times, but he was also the best thing to have happened in her life and she wouldn’t change a single piece of him.

‘Are you okay with it?’

‘Delighted,’ Jack said. ‘Who’d have thought that night when we rowed that in a few months I’d be married, a father of two, with one on the way, and we haven’t even been on our honeymoon yet?’

‘Me,’ Nina broke in, and for the first time she told him the truth, a truth she’d kept hidden from herself.

That it hadn’t been just a crush that she’d had, and she hadn’t just fancied him either, that the whole problem she’d had was …

‘I loved you from the start.’