Healed By Their Unexpected Family. Karin Baine

courtyard over the Meridian Line, where the east and west hemispheres met. Later, they’d had their meal in the Octagon Room under the stars. Those still standing had gone on to party in a nearby hotel, and booked rooms for the night. The whole day had been magical.

      ‘Amazing. I had concerns it might be a bit...cheesy but I suppose some might have called it romantic.’ He leaned across the table as he said it, reminding her of the telescope viewing she’d done with Jamie right there beside her. With him so close she’d been oblivious to anyone else in the room.

      As the grooms’ family, they’d spent the majority of the day in close proximity but that was the moment she’d become aware of him. By that time of the evening, his perfectly groomed hair had had its curl back and he’d had a shadow of a beard bristling over his once clean-shaven jaw. He’d shed his tux jacket and untied his bow tie so it hung loosely around his neck. It wouldn’t have taken much to tug on the ends and pull him in for a kiss. One she’d known would be hot when he’d been giving her his undivided attention all day. Thank goodness that had been the moment Tom and Liam had announced they were moving the party to the hotel and saved her from herself.

      ‘The food was good too.’

      ‘The first dance was my particular highlight.’ Clearly, he wasn’t going to let her forget their more intimate moments of the day.

      That first dance, when Jamie had swept her up on the dance floor at the happy couple’s insistence they join them, had indeed been memorable. Those three or four minutes in his arms, their bodies pressed close together swaying in time to the music, had been heavenly. When he’d whispered in her ear, asked if she wanted to come up to his room, she’d almost agreed. Her hormones would’ve followed him across the dance floor and into his bed, but her head and her wounded heart wouldn’t allow it. That was when she’d known she’d had to stop his flirting with her and once the song had ended, she’d made sure to keep her distance from him. Until now.

      ‘It was good to see Tom and Liam so in love. They’re going to make great parents.’

      Jamie sighed, perhaps resigning himself to the fact she didn’t want to be reminded of the chemistry they’d experienced that night. Something which apparently hadn’t dissipated since they’d last seen each other.

      ‘Tell me, Kayla, what is it you’re hoping to achieve by offering yourself up as a surrogate? You’re a midwife, aren’t you? Surely this isn’t a situation you would usually encourage?’ He lounged back in his chair, crossed his long legs at the ankles and made himself comfortable whilst he turned the spotlight back on her. It was a safer topic of conversation for her than the wedding night.

      ‘I’m a doula now. I left my position as a midwife so I could give more support to my expectant mothers. It’s none of my business what the story behind their pregnancy is but it is my job to be supportive of their choices. I just want parents and babies to be happy. The same goes in this instance too.’ She would move in with the guys for the duration of the pregnancy, to keep them involved throughout, then hand over the baby so they could start their happy little family. Something she and Liam had missed out on their entire lives.

      ‘Do you have a problem with that?’ Her brother’s sexuality was a touchy subject for her and she was very protective of him despite being the younger of the two.

      It had been their parents’ reaction to him coming out as gay which had finally given her the push to leave that toxic environment with him and move to London from their small village in Northern Ireland. They’d spent their entire childhoods cowed in fear of their disciplinarian parents, but it was when their mother and father had disowned their own son she’d seen them for the monsters they really were.

      Jamie set his coffee cup back on the table and held his hands up. ‘Not at all.’

      ‘Good. Then we’re both on the same page.’ This baby was going to share the traits of both its parents and she wanted to be certain there weren’t some dodgy conscience-free genes about to be introduced.

      ‘I wouldn’t do this for just anybody. It’s not as though I make weekly deposits down at the local sperm bank and get off on the fact there could be dozens of Jamie Juniors running around out there. Tom asked me to do this because he can’t and with me as the donor it means he still has a biological connection with the baby. The same way Liam has because you’re the egg donor.’

      ‘I have my own reasons for agreeing.’ Liam deserved to have some happiness and though she hadn’t been able to do anything in the past to help, she was in a position to do it now. It was information Jamie didn’t need to know. Her past was none of his business.

      ‘Oh? You’re not doing it simply out of the goodness of your heart, then? Like me?’ He was making fun of her because she was taking this seriously. She wished he would. It would make her feel better to know the father of this baby was sensible, reliable and stable. Even if he wasn’t going to be an active participant.

      ‘If you just wanted to have a kid, you should’ve taken me up on my offer at the hotel.’ The man winking at her, and setting her body aflame with desire, didn’t fit in with the profile supplied by those who knew him better than her.

      From the glowing accounts she’d heard before they’d met, she’d expected a deadly serious, old-beyond-his-years father figure, who’d raised Tom as his own son and was giving him away at the wedding. She’d known he wasn’t keen on long-term relationships, but she’d put that down to his busy work schedule. After getting to know him she wondered if there was anything more to him than a rakish playboy who thought nothing of propositioning her. Either way, she’d be having words with her brother about his suitability for this role.

      ‘Don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind.’ The truth slipped out before she could catch it. She took another sip of her tea to keep her from saying anything else to feed his widening grin.

      It wasn’t that she’d never been in the company of a handsome man before, or had one come on to her. She’d been getting better at handling herself in those situations because she was sick of pretending to be someone she wasn’t. Her early years had been spent trying to be the perfect daughter to prevent angering her parents. The hangover of that learned behaviour as an adult had seen her enter into a disastrous relationship where she’d spent most of it trying, and failing, to meet her partner’s expectations. She was done trying and didn’t need the drama of having another man in her life. If only all her other body parts agreed with her brain.

      ‘Well now, wouldn’t it make more sense to cut out all the intrusive medical procedures and do things the old-fashioned way?’

      Now her head was filled with explicit images of Jamie naked except for the tangled sheets they were entwined in. That longing that she’d convinced herself had been a one-off the last time they’d met began again inside her.

      With those brown eyes sparkling with mischief and promise, she was tempted to take him up on the offer. Neither of them wanted some grand love affair but it was obvious they had a connection that would make sparks fly.

      ‘I suspect sense wouldn’t be playing a big part in that scenario. More like lust.’ One of them had to be honest about this attraction they were dancing around. Pretending that this talk of a secret liaison was for their brothers’ benefit wasn’t fooling anyone.

      She swallowed hard and tried to pull herself together. When this pre-conception meeting had been first suggested, she’d sworn not to let him literally charm the pants totally off her this time. Now she was swearing at herself for getting caught under his spell again.

      ‘Would that really be so bad?’ His dark gaze rendered her immobile now that he’d made her so hot she’d melted into her chair.

      ‘There’s no guarantee we’d conceive that way.’ She was scrabbling for excuses now when her head was full of the possibilities available to her with him. The alternative conception method Jamie was suggesting sounded so much more enjoyable than the one planned that she was afraid she was going to take him up on it.

      ‘It doesn’t have to be a