Best friends, single parents...
Now they need each other like never before!
Obstetricians Jake and Emily have supported each other through tough times. But when they both become single parents, thereâs only one solutionâmove in together and share the job and the childcare! Only, the secret desires theyâve held for each other become very tough to hide. But would revealing their love risk their friendshipâor answer their dreams?
CAROLINE ANDERSON is a matriarch, writer, armchair gardener, unofficial tearoom researcher and eater of lovely cakes. Not necessarily in that order! What Caroline loves: her family. Her friends. Reading. Writing contemporary love stories. Hearing from readers. Walks by the sea with coffee/ice cream/cake thrown in! Torrential rain. Sunshine in spring/autumn. What Caroline hates: losing her pets. Fighting with her family. Cold weather. Hot weather. Computers. Clothes shopping. Carolineâs plans: keep smiling and writing!
Also by Caroline Anderson
The Valtieri Baby
Snowed in with the Billionaire
Yoxburgh Park Hospital miniseries
From Christmas to Eternity
The Secret in His Heart Risk of a Lifetime Best Friend to Wife and Mother? Their Meant-to-Be Baby The Midwifeâs Longed-for Baby Bound by Their Babies
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.
ISBN: 978-1-474-07499-5
BOUND BY THEIR BABIES
© 2018 Caroline Anderson
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
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www.millsandboon.co.uk
Special thanks to the Gibbs family, who were inadvertently so helpful with the medical elements. Iâm so glad it all went well in the end!
And huge thanks to my daughter Sarah for the excellent source material in the form of her four delightful and often hilarious young children, who help me to remember just how challenging parenting can be!
I love you all. xxx
PROLOGUE
June
âHI, EM. IâVE just come out of Theatre and found two missed calls, and I tried the house phone and got no reply. Where are you? Are you OK?â
Jake heard a soft laugh, then a little gasp, and his pulse shifted a notch.
âEm? Talk to me!â
âIâm in labour, but I canât do this. I need you, Jake...â Another little gasp. âIâm in Maternity Receptionââ
She broke off breathlessly, the contraction obviously peaking, and his heart went into overdrive.
âIâll be right there,â he promised, and sliding his phone back into his pocket, he told a colleague to page the registrar to take over from him and headed for the lift at a run, his heart hammering.
Crazy. There was no reason for him to react like this. He was an obstetrician, for heavenâs sake! He spent his life surrounded by women in labour, but this was different. This was Emily, his dearest, oldest, closest friend, and heâd promised heâd be there for her. Not as an obstetrician but as her birth partner, and that was much harder because it wasnât his place to be there, it was Peteâs.
But Pete, her husband of eleven years, the father of her baby, couldnât be here with her today or any other day. The man whoâd had everything any man could wantâeverything he himself wantedâhad lost it all for ever in a cruel twist of fate, and now all Emily had was Jake.