The Pregnancy Plan / Hope's Child: The Pregnancy Plan / Hope's Child. Brenda Harlen

patient rounds at the hospital but spending time with his wife, who was in ICU after suffering a near-fatal heart attack the previous evening.

      So all he said to her was, “And I’d let you go if I didn’t think it was likely you’d pass out while you were driving and potentially cause more harm to yourself and/or others.”

      He wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but her face got even whiter. “Have I lost that much blood?”

      He chuckled as he tugged on the second glove. “Hardly.”

      She scowled. “Then why do you think I’d pass out?”

      “Because I was there when you fell off the stone wall at Eagle Point Park and cut your knee open. You said you were okay, then you saw the blood and your face went white just before your eyes rolled back in your head.”

      He shouldn’t have mentioned the incident, because it was an admission that he still remembered that day, even so many years later. As he remembered so many things they’d done and moments they’d spent together. He had too many memories of Ashley. Memories that haunted his waking moments and taunted him in dreams.

      “I was nine,” she said, her indignant response forcing his attention back to the present.

      “And you’re as pale now as you were then,” he told her.

      Since she couldn’t see her face, she really wasn’t in a position to deny his accusation. Instead, she lifted her arm and thrust her towel-wrapped hand toward him.

      “Fine. Take a look and give me one of those butterfly bandage things so I can go home.”

      Cam took her hand and carefully began unwrapping the towel. At another time, he might have lifted his brows at the parade of little goslings embroidered along the hem, but now it was the blood soaked into the fabric that held his attention.

      “How did it happen?” he asked.

      “Broken glass.”

      He was a doctor—he’d seen far worse than a three-inch gash in the flesh of a woman’s hand. Except that this was Ashley’s hand, and the gash ran down the side of her palm before abruptly detouring toward her wrist. Luckily, it stopped short of her ulnar artery, but his heart skipped a beat in his chest when he realized how close it had come.

      “Must have been a big piece of glass,” he noted.

      “Eleven-by-fourteen.”

      It only took him a second to figure out the reference. “A picture frame.”

      She nodded, but kept her gaze firmly affixed to the opposite wall.

      He tore open the packaging of a gauze pad, dabbed gently at the skin around the wound. “Well, I think it’s going to take a little bit more than one of those butterfly bandage things to fix this up.”

      “How much more?”

      “Probably ten to fifteen stitches.”

      He thought of the patients still in the waiting room and considered sending her to the hospital for the procedure. Now that he’d examined her injury, he was confident the repair was something any ER doctor could handle.

      But she was already here and he had everything he needed on the premises to get the job done, and he would take care to minimize, as much as possible, any scarring.

      “I was afraid you were going to say something like that.” She sighed. “Okay. Let’s just do it.”

      “Well, Ashley Roarke, I never thought I’d hear you say those words to me again,” he teased.

      That remark brought color to her too-pale cheeks and a flash to her lovely violet eyes.

      Eyes that had haunted his thoughts and his dreams for longer than he was willing to admit.

      “The stitches, doctor.”

      He grinned, unrepentant. “Of course.”

      He released her hand and went to the door, poking his head out to ask Irene for a suture tray.

      She must have anticipated his request, because she came in with the necessary equipment less than a minute later.

      Her eyes grew wide when she saw Ashley’s injury.

      “Oh, honey, what have you done?”

      “I lost a fight with a piece of broken glass,” Ashley told her.

      “Well, don’t you worry. The doctor will have you fixed up in no time.”

      “But you’re going to jab me with that first, aren’t you?” she asked, warily eyeing the needle that the nurse was prepping.

      “Actually, the doctor is going to jab you with it,” Irene told her. “But you won’t feel him poking at you after that.”

      Cam fought against a smile as Ashley’s cheeks colored again.

      He’d remembered so many things about her, but he’d forgotten how easily she blushed, how much he used to enjoy making her blush. But that was a long time ago.

      Now he had to forget that they were ever lovers and concentrate on doing his job.

      “There now. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Irene said.

      “You wouldn’t be asking that question if you’d been on the other end of the needle,” Ashley told her.

      The nurse chuckled. “You never did like getting shots,” she remembered. “And your sister wasn’t any better. How’s she doing, by the way?”

      He didn’t know if Irene had asked the question because she was anxious to catch up on Roarke family gossip or if she was trying to distract Ashley from what he was doing, but since the patient wasn’t paying any attention to him or the needle sliding through her skin, he was grateful.

      “Meg’s great,” Ashley responded. “She seems to have adapted to marriage easily and blissfully.”

      “Good for her,” the nurse asserted. Then her voice gentled when she said, “But I imagine it must have been difficult for you.”

      Ashley didn’t move, but Cam sensed her tension.

      “Megan getting married so soon after you ended your engagement, I mean,” Irene clarified.

      “I was—am—happy for her.”

      “Well, of course you are. And I have no doubt that someday you’ll find a man who’s perfect for you, too.”

      “I’m not looking for a man—perfect or otherwise,” Ashley said.

      She spoke with such conviction, he found himself wondering about the details of her broken engagement, and whether he might be able to subtly pry them out of the nurse at another time. Because he had no doubt that if there were details to be known, Irene would know them.

      But for now, he clenched his teeth together to hold back the questions he wanted to ask. He had no business asking any questions, no business feeling anything for the woman who had once meant everything to him.

      “Are you up to date with your tetanus shot?” he asked instead.

      Ashley shifted her attention from the nurse to him. “I had a booster two years ago.”

      “Then you don’t need another one.”

      “Must be my lucky day.”

      He smiled, appreciating that she could find humor in the situation.

      “Since you’re just about finished up here, I’ll go check on Mrs. Kirkland,” Irene told him. Then to Ashley, “Take care of yourself, hon.”

      “I will.”

      “How do they look?” he asked, after Irene had gone.

      Ashley glanced down at her hand, at the dark thread that stood out in