Surprise Daddy: A Billionaire Doctor Accidental Pregnancy Romance Read online

  “I didn’t ask for your help,” I sneer.

  He chuckles. “No, I suppose you didn’t. Well, you have a wonderful evening.”

  And that’s it. After that, he turns on his heel and walks away. I watch as he says something to Doctor Clarke and then heads for the door. He casts one last look at me and grins to himself, shaking his head. Part of me wants to tell him to stop. To come back. Some part of me wants to thank him for stepping up on my behalf.

  But in the end, I say nothing. And I do nothing but watch him leave the bar.

  I’m staring at the large drops of blood on the floor when Andrea drops down into her seat next to me. She looks at me curiously, cocking her head like a confused puppy dog. She follows my gaze down to the floor, her eyes widening slightly when she sees the blood pooled there.

  “Damn,” she growls. “Why in the hell do I miss out on all the fun?

  Later on, after coming back from the bar, I’m in my dorm room on the hospital grounds, trying to come down off the adrenaline high of the night. I’m lying on my bed in my bra and panties, uncomfortable as hell, and trying to find some relief from the unrelenting heat outside but finding none. Staring up at the ceiling, I’m covered in a thin sheen of sweat and feel utterly miserable thanks to the heat and the drinks I had. As I lie there, I’m doing my best to make the room stop spinning – which is one of the downsides of not being much of a drinker.

  I shut my eyes tightly and grit my teeth as a groan escapes me. My mind seems to be spinning as hard as the room around me. Andrea’s voice – snippets of her advice – echo through my mind over and over again. I start to think about how tightly I control myself and how short of a leash I keep myself on. Is being in control of my emotions such a bad thing? Is it really keeping me from enjoying my life as Andrea suggests?

  As all those questions swirl through my mind, my thoughts seem drawn to one inevitable point – Doctor Roman Wheeler. I think back to what he said when he first met me at the bar. Then I think about what he did in putting himself between stinky man and me – specifically about what he did to stinky man in defense of me. He was swift, powerful, and commanding. He took the man down without even breaking a sweat. It was like playtime for him.

  Having thoughts of Roman in my head feels like the sort of bad decision somebody makes at two in the morning after having had a few too many drinks. It feels good at the time, but you know you’ll end up paying for it later.

  And yet, I can’t get the images of him out of my mind.

  I close my eyes and see his strong jawline, his toned, chiseled body. I see the way the t-shirt he’d been wearing hugged the hard planes and angles of his torso and clung to his strong biceps and broad shoulders. I see his golden skin and those icy blue eyes that seem to bore straight down into my soul.

  God, he’s a beautiful man. I can’t deny that watching him in action, seeing him take that man down – for me – got me more than a little hot. It’s terrible and it’s wrong – I should not be turned on by violence...

  And yet, here we are.

  It’s not necessarily the violence that turned me on, but the fact that Roman defended me the way he did. As I see him in my mind’s eye, I feel a heat wash through me. It’s a heat that isn’t fueled by the alcohol in my system. I want to kick my own ass. But I can’t stop it. The heat washing through me flows through my breasts, speeding down through my core, and settles between my thighs. As my nipples stiffen, I feel the center of me growing hotter. Wetter. In the blink of an eye, I’m dripping wet, a yawning need consuming me.

  I slide my hand down my stomach, trailing my fingertips along my skin, which sends shivers coursing through me. Biting my bottom lip, I slip my hand into my panties and run my fingers along lips that are already slick and quivering. A small gasp passes my lips as I slip a finger into me, imagining Roman down on his knees before me, his face pressed hard between my thighs, his tongue lapping at my swollen bud.

  I drive my finger deeper into my pussy, gritting my teeth as I picture myself gripping Roman by the hair and grinding my wetness against his warm and generous mouth. I can feel his tongue probing deep within me, feel his fingers pumping into me harder. Faster. My body is trembling, and my breath is quick.

  I slip my other hand down, rubbing my clit as I plunge my fingers into my pussy, my juices making everything slick. In my fantasy, Roman has flipped me over onto my stomach. I feel him gripping my hips, his fingers pressed into my flesh. I feel him slamming that long, thick cock into my pussy again and again. I cry out as a second finger joins the first inside of me, banging me hard.

  Roman’s hands are in my hair, pulling on it as he pounds his cock into me. I hear the sound of his body slapping against mine in a hard, steady rhythm. Rubbing my clit with one hand, driving my fingers into my pussy with the other, I feel myself rushing toward the brink. I feel his breath, warm upon my skin. His tongue, as he licks and sucks on my stiff nipples, sending a bolt of lightning shooting through me.

  I hear Roman’s voice, hear his moans of pleasure as he fucks me. My body is tingling, tightening, and as I work my clit and my pussy, imagining the feel of his shaft inside of me with absolute relish, I reach the peak. I have to stifle my voice to keep my neighbors from hearing me cry out – and not for the first time; I curse the thin walls in this place.

  As I imagine him shuddering tightly in his own climax, my entire body tightens, and then gives way to a feeling of almost weightlessness as I start to tremble hard. My orgasm crashes down over me, powerful and intense. It leaves me breathless. As I press my head back into my pillows, the room seeming to spin even harder now than it was before, I feel rivulets of sweat rolling down my face.

  I take a few moments to catch my breath and gather myself before I climb off the bed and head into the shower to cool off, still enveloped in a cloud of ecstasy. As the cold water rains down over me, I bite my bottom lip and feel the heat flare in my cheeks, doing everything I can to banish all thoughts of Roman Wheeler from my mind.

  Those are thoughts that, delicious though they may be, are dangerous. Thoughts I can’t afford to be having.

  4

  Roman

  “Clamp that off and get me some suction,” I order.

  She does as I ask, sucking the welling blood out of the way and giving me a better view of what we’re working with. And it’s not good. I can already tell there is no way we’re going to be able to save this guy’s leg. If I’d had the sort of equipment I had back at Landstuhl I might have had a chance. But in these conditions, it’s just not going to happen. I can only do so much.

  I shake my head and look up at Scarlet, who’s assisting me with this surgery. I can tell by the way her face falls that she can see it in my eyes.

  “We need the bone saw,” I tell her after a long moment.

  “We haven’t even tried to save the leg, Doctor Wheeler.”

  “Because we can’t,” I shake my head, doing my best to be patient. “There’s just too much damage. We have to take the leg.”

  Scarlet’s surgical mask obscures most of her face, but those sparkling green eyes are more than visible and radiate her extreme displeasure with me. Scarlet is young. Naïve. She’s idealistic and seems to think that nothing more than positive thoughts and lots of wishes will make everything okay. Which is all well and good. But that’s not the way the real world works. There is no amount of wishes or positive thoughts that are going to fix the shredded mess that is this guy’s leg.

  “Doctor Wheeler, he’s just a kid,” she argues. “We at least have to try.”

  I look down at the patient and see that she’s right – he is just a kid. Sixteen at most. He’d apparently gotten hit with shrapnel from an IUD. I feel bad for the kid. He’s an innocent bystander in all of this, who was just out with his friends playing soccer. Now his life is about to change forever, and he’s never going to play soccer again. And for what?

  But I can’t let my personal feelings get in the way of my assessment and treatment as a doctor.
I can’t let my pity for this kid – for any kid, and God knows we’ve seen a lot of them – get in the way of my professional judgment or impact my actions in a way that would be detrimental to him or the people waiting for surgery behind him – and there are certainly a lot of them today.

  Logically, my choices are clear: Take the leg and save his life – not to mention the lives of people waiting in line behind him. Or spend hours doing everything I can think of to save his leg, all the while letting others die as they wait, only to inevitably end up right where I am now – having to take the leg anyway. I can’t justify putting the lives of others at risk when I already know there’s no saving this kid’s leg.

  “I wish we could, Nurse Carrington,” I say more forcefully. “But we can’t. We also have more patients waiting.”

  “So you’re just going to lop off his leg? In the name of expediency?” she gasps. “You’re dooming him to a lifetime handicap because you won’t spend the time to try?”

  I blow out a breath, doing my best to control my temper. I don’t like being questioned – especially by somebody without my skill and expertise. I’m a damn good surgeon. I know my craft well and perform it even better. Scarlet is a very good nurse; I can’t take that away from her. But who in the hell does she think she is to question me about matters of surgical need and expediency? She’s not a surgeon. She doesn’t have my skill, expertise, or knowledge. Doing what’s needed to save this kid’s leg – if it can even be done – is delicate and complicated. More than that, it requires specialized equipment this place just doesn’t have.

  Compared to the modern and state of the art hospital at Landstuhl, this place is like doing surgery on a Civil War battlefield.

  “I appreciate your passion, but there is nothing we can do,” I growl, my voice low and tight. “He was doomed to a lifetime of being handicapped before he was ever rolled into this surgical suite.”

  Surgical suite. I want to laugh bitterly at that description of the room we’re in. Calling this a surgical suite is like calling a seaside shanty a beachfront mansion. I mean, it’s got four walls, a ceiling, and surprisingly enough, is clean and sterile. But it’s relatively primitive. At least, by the standards I’m used to working in. The equipment is rudimentary, and there is nothing state of the art about anything they’re doing here.

  I have to give them credit for doing the best they can with what they have, but it’s clear that they’re trying to practice medicine with one hand tied behind their backs. They just aren’t funded well enough to provide the level of care that I, for one, am used to providing. This is more a MASH unit than an actual hospital, and the doctors here are performing meatball surgery, doing the best they can to save as many lives as possible – which I absolutely commend them for. They’re giving of themselves and are doing good works. But to save as many lives as possible, young idealists like Nurse Carrington are going to have to learn that it requires surgeons to make some very tough choices – choices that will impact others for a lifetime.

  “Doctor Wheeler, I –”

  “This isn’t a discussion,” I snap. “Bone saw. Now.”

  She hesitates, her eyes locked onto mine. Scarlet’s eyes narrow and she gets a stubborn set to her jaw as she lifts her chin defiantly. She obviously doesn’t agree with my call and is making sure I know it. Unfortunately for her, she doesn’t get a vote.

  “Nurse Carrington,” I say, absolute steel in my voice. “Give me the bone saw.”

  “I can’t agree with this decision, Doctor,” she responds.

  I give her a long look, my anger threatening to boil over. I look down at the kid on my table and then back up at Scarlet. She hasn’t budged an inch, and I don’t get the sense she’s going to. If this were a military organization, I’d have her brought up on charges of insubordination. Unfortunately, that’s not an option for me here. In fact, I have zero fucking recourse.

  “Nurse Decker, please replace Nurse Carrington at the table,” I order. “Now.”

  The two women exchange uneasy glances, but neither of them moves a muscle, which pisses me off even more. It makes me wish, more than ever, that this was a military facility, just so I don’t have to put up with this bullshit.

  “Scarlet, get the hell out of my operating suite!” I shout. “You’re done here. Get the fuck out.”

  She jumps as if startled and her eyes widen. She stares at me for a long moment, apparently too stunned to move. I glare at her harder, and she seems to finally come back to herself. Without a word, she leaves the table and pushes her way through the doors and out of the operating suite, leaving an air colder than the Arctic in her wake.

  Nurse Decker tentatively steps up to the table, her eyes wide and filled with fear. She clears her throat and gives me a small nod as she reaches for the bone saw and hands it over to me.

  “Bone saw, Doctor Wheeler,” she stammers, her voice trembling.

  I take the instrument from her hand and set to work. I don’t like the idea of removing his leg any more than Scarlet does, but I have to take a reality-based approach to medicine and treatment.

  The operation, tragic as it was, was a success. Nurse Decker stepped up, overcoming a rough start, and assisted admirably. I got the sense she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of taking the kid’s leg either, but at least she was a professional about it.

  Stepping out of the operating suite, I strip off my gloves and drop them into a can near the door. I wash up and put on a fresh gown before stepping into another operating suite. There is no shortage of people who need help. Not in this place where bullets fly only slightly less often than soccer balls.

  Thankfully, most of the people rolled through my operating suite after that aren’t overly complicated surgeries. Most of them I can do with my eyes closed. But I spend the next ten hours patching up holes, putting together broken bodies, and doing what I can to save as many lives as possible. By the end of my shift, I’m beat. All I want is something to eat, something to drink, and then a solid eight hours of sleep. At least.

  I get myself cleaned up and head out of the surgery wing, heading for the dormitories. I’m going to shower and get changed before I wander out and find some food. As I approach the nurse’s station, I see Scarlet standing there filling out some paperwork and speaking in quiet tones to one of the other nurses – Stephanie something-or-other – who is working behind the counter.

  There aren’t very many people milling about, and the hallways are quiet, so the squeak of my shoes on the tile floor are loud and shrill. Scarlet looks up at me as I draw near and rolls her eyes before looking back down at the papers in front of her. Her cheeks flush with what I assume is anger, and I can tell it’s taking everything in her to not scream at me there in the hallway.

  I stop and lean against the counter. She’s very pointedly ignoring me as she scribbles her notes on the charts in front of her. But she finally can’t stand it anymore and slams her pen down on the counter, turning to face me. A sheepish expression crosses Stephanie something-or-other’s face, and she quietly slips away, stepping into the back office and shutting the door behind her – either to give us a little privacy or to protect herself from the coming explosion.

  I know Scarlet is about to blow up. I just stand there and wait for it. She needs to get it out; otherwise it’ll fester inside of her, and since I still have a couple of weeks left here and I’ll undoubtedly still have some shifts with her, I’d rather things not be strained and awkward.

  “I’m a good nurse,” she starts. “I’m a damn good nurse.”

  “I don’t disagree,” I respond calmly.

  “You embarrassed me in there.”

  “No, you embarrassed yourself,” I reply mildly. “You’re there to assist me, not challenge my decisions or authority in the operating room.”

  “Just because I don’t agree with you about a medical procedure, that doesn’t give you the right to throw me out of the operating room.”

  “Actually, it does,” I state firmly, tryi
ng to project authority while also trying not to cross the line into being rude. “It’s my operating suite. And in my operating suite, my word is law. You are there to assist, not to question my judgment.”

  She squares up to me, and even though she’s nearly a foot shorter than I am, she does her best to make herself look larger. She’s not easily intimidated; I’ll give her that. But she’s also in the wrong here and doesn’t even see it.

  “You are such an arrogant ass,” she hisses. “You’re not God, you know.”

  “I never claimed to be,” I reply. “But in my operating room, you still have to follow my orders.”

  Her mouth falls open, and she’s apoplectic. “Who do you think you are? This is not the military, in case you haven’t noticed,” she spits. “We work as a team in the operating room, Doctor Wheeler.”

  I feel my blood pressure rising and am doing my level best to keep my temper in check. But Scarlet’s naïve, idealistic bullshit is getting incredibly taxing. The truth is, we’re not equals in the operating room. If something goes bad, it’s not her that will take the brunt of the blame. It’s me. It’s my name on all the reports and my name attached to the surgery. Which means, if something goes sideways and somebody dies who shouldn’t have died, it’s me who takes the hit. Not her. Which is why my word is the law inside those walls.

  “While I appreciate the sentiment, Nurse Carrington, the truth of the matter is that within the walls of an operating room, it is not a democracy. It’s a dictatorship, and my voice is the only one that matters,” I tell her through gritted teeth. “As for it being a team, you’re right in the way a player does exactly what his or her coach tells them to do.”

  She stares at me, completely dumbfounded for a moment. I’m obviously not scoring many points with her right now. My chances of ever getting her into bed are hovering somewhere around zero right about now, but as long as I’m working at this hospital, establishing the ground rules within my operating room is paramount to me.