The Pregnancy Project

“Dr. Schwartz is the Chinese doctor?” Ella asked, feeling a bit giddy with the thought that Jacob Weber wasn’t turning her away cold.

“She’s married to a colleague of mine, Mark Schwartz, and she took his name.”

Ella couldn’t suppress a smile.

“As I was saying,” he continued, still without the slightest alteration in his somber demeanor. “Because of my caseload and Dr. Schwartz’s schedule, all procedures will be done in the evenings, here, after office hours.”

“That’s fine,” she assured hurriedly.

“Even with your full life?”

Oh, he was nasty! But Ella wasn’t going to let him get the best of her. “I told you I’m willing to do whatever is necessary,” she informed him.

“Well, it will be necessary for you to meet with me so I can outline what the study entails. And that will have to be after hours, too, because I don’t have any other time for it.”

He leaned forward and scanned a desk calendar. “Today is Thursday and I’m busy tonight, so that’s out. I have to be at a conference all day and evening Saturday and Sunday, and Monday evening is when the study is slated to begin,” he said, more as if he was thinking out loud than explaining his time constraints to her. “I can skip the conference’s opening ceremony and dinner tomorrow night, but I have a meeting after that that I’ll have to get to. So that has to be it. And since the hour I’m with you will be my single chance to eat, we’ll have to do it over a meal.”

Hardly a gracious invitation but she would take what she could get. “Just tell me where and when,” she said.

He did, without missing a beat or even inquiring if she minded going to the heart of Boston to the hotel where his conference was being held to make it convenient for him.

“I’ll be there,” she said after writing the time and location in her day planner and returning it to her purse.

“I’ll keep your file,” he informed her then, standing and taking it with him as he did. “Have Bev give you the paperwork you’ll need to fill out—everyone else has already done that.”

“Okay. And I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

His only answer was to raise an eyebrow at her just before he rounded the desk and walked out of the office as abruptly as he’d entered it, not so much as saying goodbye to her.

But despite his bad manners Ella felt relief on two fronts.

The renowned Dr. Jacob Weber was going to give her one last chance to have a baby.

And he didn’t seem to remember either her name or the scandal she’d been involved in in college.

Chapter Two

J acob Weber was awakened the next morning by warm, sloppy kisses.

“Ah, can’t you wait for the alarm just one morning?” he groused, keeping his eyes closed.

His only answer was more kisses. More kisses with even more enthusiasm. On his cheek, his nose, his ear, his brow…

“Okay, okay, I get the message,” he said, opening his eyes to the tiny black schnauzer puppy he’d been sharing his bed with for the past four weeks.

He couldn’t be angry, though. Not when he was looking into the furry face of the three-pound dog standing on his pillow with her head down, her shiny black nose an inch away from his, her butt up and her stubby tail wagging gaily in the air.

If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought she was smiling at him.

He pretended to be more peeved than he actually was now that he was awake and said, “Have you forgotten that I’m the guy who found you abandoned on the street and kept you alive by feeding you with an eyedropper and then a baby bottle until you figured out how to lap up that special formula the vet charges me an arm and leg for? The least you could do is let me sleep until six-thirty.”

The schnauzer clearly had no sense of guilt. She merely barked a tiny, high-pitched yip to emphasize her point.

And her point, Jacob knew, was that she wanted to go outside. Not something he could deny her when, even though she still needed concentrated care, he was making headway in housebreaking her. But only tentative headway. Delays were not tolerated for long. Which the second yip warned him of.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m getting up,” he said, rolling out of bed and reaching for the sweatpants he’d learned in the past four weeks to keep at the ready.

As he pulled them on he couldn’t help chuckling at the sight of the puppy playing tug-of-war with the edge of his sheet, growling and shaking her head furiously in the battle.

“That’s it, Champ, give it hell. Live up to your name. You’re nothing if not feisty,” he said.

The mention of feistiness brought with it another thought, this one of the woman he’d met in his office the day before. The woman who had been coming much—much—too easily to mind since he’d met her. Ella Gardner.

Ella Gardner.

Feisty and determined. Like Champ.

Jacob couldn’t help smiling to himself when he recalled her I-don’t-need-a-man speech. What had she said about herself? That she was a capable, independent person who didn’t have time to wait for Mr. Right, the sequel….

“Mr. Right, the sequel,” he repeated out loud, chuckling again. “I liked that one,” he informed Champ as he scooped her up in one hand and took her downstairs and out the back door of his two story townhouse.

The tiny dog couldn’t make it up or down the three steps that dropped to the patch of lawn he was allotted, so he deposited Champ at the bottom of them and then sat on the top one, his mind continuing to wander back a day.

To Ella Gardner.

He wasn’t sure why she was sticking with him. She was pretty enough—beautiful actually. Glisteningly-bright, riotously curly blond hair. Big, sparkling silver-gray eyes with long, thick lashes. Skin like alabaster. A small, thin, pert nose. Lips that—even when she’d been telling him off—had only left him wondering if they felt as soft as they looked.

Of course that in itself—noting details of her face, wondering things like how soft her lips were—was an oddity. He’d treated beautiful women in the past. But after initially registering the woman’s appearance on some level, it became something he didn’t pay any more attention to than he paid to the appearance of his less-than-beautiful patients. They were all patients—ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent married patients. They were his cases. His work. Certainly they weren’t anything personal to him. He couldn’t do his job if they were. Not legally, ethically, morally or emotionally.

Yet this one was lingering in his head the way no one before her ever had.

Was it the feistiness? he asked himself as he watched Champ wrestle fearlessly with a rubber duck that was as big as she was, and again connected the pup’s dauntless spirit to Ella Gardner.

Maybe.

He liked a little spunk, he had to admit it. And Ella Gardner seemed to have that—even if she had obviously been keeping her temper in check.

But again, he had patients whose spirit he admired and not one of them had come home from the office in his head the way Ella Gardner had. Not one had been waiting for him behind his lids when he’d closed his eyes the night before. And here he was now, barely awake and thinking about her again. Her, not any of his other tenacious, strong-willed patients.

He just couldn’t figure it out. He knew people who attributed attraction to some kind of questionable science and called it chemistry. That theory just hadn’t ever held water for him. If it was science, it was the flimsiest kind. That’s what he’d argued even with an old medical school classmate who was doing top-dollar research on pheromones for a perfume company.

But for the first time he had to concede that maybe—even if it was flimsy—chemistry between two people did exist. Because he was just stumped when it came to finding any other explanation for why the image of Ella Gardner kept following him around.

For why he kept mentally replaying their brief, all-business meeting. Every minute of it, every nuance, every expression on her face and intonation of her voice.

He just couldn’t find any other explanation for why he continued to recall her sweet, clean scent greeting him when he’d walked into his office. And how much he’d liked it.

He certainly couldn’t find any explanation other than chemistry for the regret he’d been suffering over not having taken the hand she’d extended to him to shake, over missing an opportunity to touch her.