The Pregnancy Project. Victoria Pade

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.

      And what was it—if not chemistry—that had made him ignore that simple gesture from her in the first place? he asked himself. He would have shaken any other patient’s hand. But when it came to Ella Gardner there had been something about her from the instant he’d set eyes on her that had knocked him off-kilter and his instinctive response to that had been to keep his distance, to be even more formal, more remote and removed than usual.

      He didn’t understand it. He hadn’t understood it when it had happened. And true to form, he’d retreated into that attitude that had gotten him through the earlier part of his life. That bad attitude from which he’d recently faced some old repercussions.

      But a doctor just couldn’t have…

      What exactly was it that he had for Ella Gardner? he asked himself. Stirrings? Attraction? Some kind of unaccountable infatuation?

      He didn’t know what it was or what to call it.

      But whatever it was that he’d had, a doctor just couldn’t have it for a patient.

      And she was a patient.

      Okay, yes, it could be argued that for now she wasn’t his patient. That during the course of treatment she would be Kim Schwartz’s patient, that he wouldn’t so much as examine her until after the alternative course was finished and he began the in vitro procedures. It could be argued that only then would Ella Gardner be his patient.

      But he was splitting hairs and he knew it. Basically she was still a patient—or at least a patient-in-waiting. And he didn’t get personally involved with patients or with patients-in-waiting.

      Hell, he didn’t get personally involved with anyone.

      And that was how he liked it. How he liked his life. No personal involvements meant no complications. It meant no encumbrances. No expectations. No disappointments. Uninvolved and unattached—that was how he made sure to keep himself, focusing on his work and solely on his work. That was the way it had always been, and that was the way he wanted it to stay. The way he intended to make sure it stayed. Which was why he never let any woman get too close or stick around too long.

      “So vacate the premises of my brain, Ella Gardner,” he muttered under his breath, through clenched teeth.

      The sound of his voice was enough to distract Champ from the rubber duck, and she did her springy little run over to him and promptly began a tug-of-war with his big toe. Which she could barely open her mouth wide enough to accommodate.

      Her pin-sharp teeth hurt some, but still her struggle made Jacob laugh. He leaned forward and picked up the pup again to take her inside.

      “Patients and puppies—sometimes you’re both pains in my neck,” he told Champ.

      But he still held the tiny dog to his face, rubbing his nose in the downy fur behind one of her ears.

      And in spite of all his determination to put Ella Gardner firmly out of his mind, he also still found himself—entirely against his will—looking forward to having dinner with her tonight more than he should have.

      And way, way more than he wanted to.

       Chapter Three

       “T his is Jacob Weber. I’ve had a patient emergency this afternoon and am running behind schedule. You’ll have to meet me at my office rather than at the hotel and wait for me to finish with my other appointments today. We may or may not be eating, depending on the time left before my meeting, but I’ll make sure to run you through the orientation, even if it’s on the fly. Unless, of course, you aren’t here when I finish for the day, and then I’ll assume you’ve had second thoughts about this course.”

      Ella played the message a second time, shaking her head as she listened again. She was amazed by the doctor’s curt, verging-on-rude demeanor even on the telephone. Although she supposed she should give him points for making the phone call himself, for not merely having his receptionist do it.

      On the other hand, as Ella played the message a third time, she thought that he might be better off having his receptionist relay his messages. At least Bev was nice.

      But Ella reminded herself that Jacob Weber was the best there was when it came to infertility, so she would just have to overlook his rotten social skills to be treated by him.

      It was a shame, though, she couldn’t help thinking. Because as the deep, rich tones of his voice wafted over the line for the fourth run-through of the message, the image of him spontaneously presented itself to her mind’s eye—the way it had about a million times since she’d met him. It was a shame that someone with the face of a Greek god, someone with broad shoulders and smoldering nearly purple eyes, someone who exuded a raw, steamy sexuality that he didn’t even seem aware of, had a gargoyle’s personality. Without that he would have been a powerhouse of a man, whom no woman could resist.

      Then again, maybe for her own sake it was good that he was so unlikable. Because if she was playing his phone message four times just to hear his voice