swallowed ineffectually, her mouth too parched, and her heart wasn’t so much beating in her chest as assaulting her chest wall. Whatever she’d imagined, she wasn’t mentally prepared for this but there was nothing else for it.
Steeling herself against the kick from the moment she laid eyes on Max again, Evie lifted her head boldly and completed a slow one-eighty.
She hadn’t steeled herself enough.
‘Max.’ She gritted her teeth, striving to sound calm. In control.
‘What are you doing here, Evie?’
There was still no trace of chilliness in his tone. Was that a good thing, or a bad one? It suggested he knew nothing about Imogen, so maybe there was still hope. But then again, it also meant he’d been happy with their fling and certainly hadn’t been thinking about her these last twelve months so the bombshell of a daughter wouldn’t be well received.
So she stayed silent and contented herself with drinking in the man she recalled so very intimately.
Time apart had done little to diminish the sheer physical presence he exuded and she was grateful for the few feet of space between them, acting as something of a safety buffer, both mentally and physically. But space couldn’t erase everything. The way Max looked and the authority he exuded. The feel of his skin beneath her hands and her body. The way he smelled—no overpowering aftershave for Max, but instead a faint, intoxicating masculine scent underpinned with a hint of lime basil shower gel she remembered only too well.
‘Are you working here again?’ he pushed.
‘No.’
Silence hung between them.
‘Evangeline, why are you here?’
She had to say something. She was standing in the middle of a dedicated transplant unit—she had to explain her visit somehow. So she settled for a half-truth.
‘My sister-in-law has some tests before her appointment with Mrs Goodwin,’ Evie started carefully, studying his face for any kind of reaction.
‘Arabella Goodwin?’ He frowned. ‘The nephrologist?’
‘That’s right,’ she confirmed slowly.
‘Is it serious?’
Evie searched his face; she needed to be careful here. Really be sure of herself before she said anything.
Admittedly, he seemed genuinely interested, but that meant nothing. This was the side of Max she knew, his sincere concern for his patients and their families. But it didn’t mean he wanted a family of his own. It just meant he was dedicated to his career.
Just as his parents had cruelly reminded her.
Just as they’d made her see that, for Max at least, their short-lived fling had been just that. It certainly hadn’t been the start of something. He hadn’t asked her to wait for him whilst he was away in Gaza. He hadn’t even told her that his parents were the renowned surgeons she had read about, attended guest speaker talks to see, studied, throughout her medical studies.
In short, they had shared five nights and four days of intense, unparalleled intimacy, yet told each other so very little about their lives beyond the bedroom.
What if she told him everything now only for him—out of some ill-considered knee-jerk sense of obligation—to involve himself in their lives, only to resent his daughter’s existence every time it even threatened to impact on his career?
Wasn’t that the nightmare scenario his parents had painted for her? Right before they’d offered her enough money to secure her daughter’s financial future in the event that her kidney transplant failed and she wasn’t around to look after her precious daughter herself?
But it wasn’t just what they’d said, it had been their calm, assured delivery. As if they were acting in her interests as much as in their son’s. As if they really believed that her taking the money and staying away was the best solution for everyone. That was what had convinced her to take their word for it.
The savage protectiveness Evie felt for her new daughter still caught her unawares sometimes. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to protect her beautiful daughter from anything which—or anyone who—could potentially hurt her.
If the Van Bergs had been cruel or vindictive, she probably wouldn’t have believed them, wouldn’t have taken the money. But she’d been frightened. And vulnerable. Between her bleak prognosis and her premature baby, she hadn’t been able to face a battle on a third front. And if his parents were right and Max didn’t want to know, how could she face yet more anguish? She couldn’t risk it. So now, she needed to buy herself time to think. She’d never expected to see Max again.
But was that completely true? Hadn’t she always hoped, deep down, when she was stronger, and if the transplant was successful, that she might be able to track him down again? Hadn’t she told herself that, if all went well, she would push past her own fears of rejection and loss to finally tell him about his daughter? For Imogen’s sake, because her precious daughter deserved so much more.
But now was not that moment.
‘Annie’s going through final checks for a kidney transplant. Blood pressure and all that,’ Evie trotted out.
She sounded more blasé than she’d have liked, but it was better than having to tell him Annie was actually a kidney donor and that she herself was the recipient. And it was better than breaking down and telling him how frightened she was.
She should have known better than to think she could fool someone as astute as Max. Disbelieving eyes raked over her and she tried to suppress the wave of heat at his intense assessment, all too conscious of the toll her illness and the pregnancy had taken on her over the last year. Dark pits circled her eyes, her frame was unattractively thinner, and her skin flat and pallid—no matter how much she tried to lift it with clever make-up.
She squirmed under his sharp gaze.
‘God, Evie, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.’ The reserved tone was gone again, replaced by an open candour she thought was more Max-like. ‘Didn’t you say you were close to your brother and his wife? No wonder you look so pale—you must be so worried about her.’
Her stomach flip-flopped. He’d actually remembered some of the few things she’d told him. Was that really something he’d have bothered to take notice of if it had only been about the sex? Her mind swirled with conflicting thoughts.
She jumped as she closed the gap between them, his hands closing firmly around her shoulders, drawing her in so that she had no choice but to look him in the eye.
‘Evie, if you need anything, you know you can come to me, don’t you?’
Residual sexual attraction still fizzled between them.
Chemistry. It’s just chemistry, Evie repeated to herself, clinging to the mantra like some kind of virtual life raft. But her grip was slipping and a flare of hope flickered into life deep in her chest. At this stage of her renal failure, a man who could make her feel attractive, wanted, who could make her forget her constantly exhausted body and her regular rounds of dialysis, was a rare male indeed.
Only Max could have snuck under her skin in five minutes flat.
She so desperately wanted to let him kiss her, take her, reassure her that she was still a sexy, desirable woman. It would be welcome relief after the year she’d had.
But this wasn’t about her, this was about Imogen, too, and Evie couldn’t risk her daughter being drawn into some game as a pawn. Hadn’t her own biological father used herself and her brother to hurt their mother? First by walking out on them when Evie had been a baby, with no contact for years, and then by trying to play them off against each other when their mother had finally found happiness with a new man. A kind man who Evie considered to be her true father rather than simply her stepfather. A man who had saved her from going down the kind of route that too many of her troubled teens now found themselves