The Pregnancy Project. Victoria Pade

to him.

      But of course she wasn’t attracted to him. Continuing to think about how jaw-droppingly handsome he was was just like recalling an awesome winter sunset—it might be something to behold but only from the warm safety of a house where fierce winds blowing outside couldn’t get in.

      No, there was no way she was attracted to Jacob Weber. She needed his professional services, his talents, skills and experience as a doctor and that was all. Being attracted to him amidst that—coupled with his contrary, irritable, arrogant temperament—would be very, very bad. It was the absolute last thing she needed. Or wanted.

      Still, she played the message a fifth time, telling herself it was for its supercilious, overbearing tone, and the turnoff that provided. That it was not for the sound of the polished-mahogany voice that delivered it.

      Then she made herself hang up the phone.

      A woman would have to be crazy or masochistic to put up with a man like that in any kind of personal relationship, she asserted to herself. And she wasn’t crazy. Or masochistic. Or looking for a new relationship with any man, let alone one like Jacob Weber.

      A single marriage that had demanded too long a period of suppressing her own needs and desires, a marriage in which she’d allowed herself to be controlled, was enough for her. She certainly didn’t need to top it off with someone like the unpleasant doctor.

      “No, thanks,” she said out loud as she went into her bedroom to change out of her business suit.

      “Just do your job and do it well, and I’ll be only too happy never to have to see you again.” She went on talking to the unseen Jacob Weber as she put on a pair of gray slacks and a white camp shirt for her second encounter with the prickly physician.

      And hopefully it wouldn’t take too long to accomplish the feat of getting her pregnant, she added silently, fighting against the ever-present fear that it wouldn’t happen at all. Because the less time she had to spend with the man and tolerate his pomposity, the better.

      “I’ll be glad when you’re nothing but a bad memory,” she proclaimed as she scrunched the curly explosion of her hair above the rubber band that held it at her crown and retraced her steps out of her bedroom and then out of her apartment.

      And that’s all he’d be, too, she assured herself as she left the building and got into her car to drive to Jacob Weber’s office. “Nothing but a bad, bad memory,” she repeated forcefully.

      Yet somewhere buried deep beneath that bravado lurked a tiny shadow of doubt.

      A tiny shadow of doubt born of the fact that every time she thought about seeing the gargoyle in a Greek god’s body again she felt a twinge of excitement….

      “He’s right behind me, I promise,” Marta said to Ella as the nurse came through the door from the inner office into the waiting room where Ella had been sitting for over an hour.

      “Okay,” Ella answered, hoping the woman was right but unsure whether to believe it or not since Bev, the receptionist, had told her the doctor would be out after the last patient had left forty minutes ago and then repeated it when she’d left herself twenty minutes earlier.

      Marta gave her a reassuring smile, said good-night, and went out.

      The longer Ella sat there, the more difficult it was to avoid what she considered her pregnancy demons. The thoughts—the doubts—that crept into her mind when she wasn’t guarding against them or when she had too much time on her hands.

      What if nothing worked and she never got pregnant? What if all the money, all the effort, all the pain came to naught? What if she spent her entire life childless?

      The questions tortured her and, as if she’d outrun them, she stood and forced herself to focus only on the present. On the fact that Jacob Weber was keeping her waiting.

      Clearly the office ran on his timetable, and he wouldn’t be rushed. For anyone. Certainly not for her.

      Ella decided to take a stroll around the waiting room, pausing to look more closely at the framed prints on the walls, to straighten the magazines on the coffee table, to pluck a dead leaf from the fern and bury it in the soil around its roots. And all the while she wondered if Jacob Weber was making her cool her heels on purpose. Just to be contrary. Or as some kind of test.

      Then, through the cut-out that connected the receptionist’s area with the waiting room she saw the light in the hallway that ran between the examining rooms turn off, and she felt encouraged.

      At least she did until she caught sight of the man himself opening the door to what looked like a supply closet.

      Without any acknowledgment of her, or any apparent awareness that she was even out there, he slipped inside the closet and closed the door behind him.

      He probably put counting cotton balls ahead of meeting with her, she thought, feeling a little surly after all the time she’d been waiting.

      He was only in the supply closet for a moment, though, before he emerged again. Yet he still offered her not even a glance or a word to let her know he really was on his way before he stopped at the area where the scale and other machinery were located—the area that was apparently the nurse’s work station.

      Did he even know she was watching him? Ella wondered.

      He didn’t seem to. Or care, if he did, because for what felt like an eternity his attention was on something.

      The man really was a jerk, Ella thought, staring openly at him in hopes of at least drawing a glance.

      It didn’t work. He went right on looking over some sort of paperwork, oblivious to her.

      Jerk, jerk, jerk…

      Good-looking jerk, though, she had to concede as she took in the sight of him in tan slacks and a tan sports coat over a darker brown dress shirt and tan tie that all seemed to set off his chestnut hair to perfect effect.

      But again she reminded herself that he was a gargoyle in a Greek god’s body so as not to let that handsome appearance cloud the reality.

      After another few minutes he seemed to finish what he was doing, because he tucked the paperwork into a file and brought it to the receptionist’s desk, finally gazing in Ella’s direction.

      But that was as much as she got.

      They were only a few feet apart, and he still didn’t bother to speak. He merely raised a cursory glance at her before lowering his eyes to the desk again to write something on a note he attached to the file.

      Maybe he was just singularly dedicated, Ella told herself. But that didn’t keep his actions from seeming just plain rude.

      He finally flipped off the rest of the lights in that portion of the office and—at last—headed for the door that would bring him into the waiting room.

      You’d better be damn good at what you do, Ella thought as he joined her.

      She had to look twice to believe what else she was seeing, however. Riding along in the side pocket of his sports coat was what appeared to be a tiny black puppy with two front paws and a soft furry head—no bigger than a plum—sticking out of the top.

      The almost-too-small-to-be-real dog barked a squeaky-but-fearless bark at her that Jacob Weber ignored as, without greeting her, he said, “I’m going to have to make a stop at my place—luckily it’s just across the street. Then it looks like all we’ll have time for is a fast-food dinner before I need to make my meeting. There’s a hole-in-the-wall a few doors down that has Chicago-style hot dogs. We’ll probably have to stand and eat them at one of the counters along the wall, but that’s as good as it’s going to get.”

      And all that without any reference whatsoever to the puppy in his pocket.

      “Uh…okay,” Ella said. But she refused to be left in the dark about the dog and pointed to the side of the doctor’s coat. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

      Jacob