The Doctors' Baby Miracle. Tina Beckett

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       PROLOGUE

      Two years ago

      TUCKER STEVENSON WALKED out of the clinic a new man.

      Only he didn’t feel new. He felt old and cynical and very, very tired. But at least he’d severed himself from his past, in more ways than one. What was that old Grimm’s fairy tale he’d read as a child? Seven at One Blow? Well, he hadn’t struck down seven, but two was enough: a vasectomy and a divorce. It did seem kind of ironic that his test for “swimmers” should be scheduled for the very same day his divorce became final.

      He’d never in his worst nightmares suspected he and Kady would end this way. Theirs had been the stuff dreams were made of. Or so he’d thought. Yet here he was, making sure what had happened to them would never happen again.

      He glanced back at the clinic before pulling his sunglasses off his head and dropping them onto his nose, dimming the view around him as he made his way to the subway station.

      It was done. There was no going back.

      His doctor, while arguing against the procedure, saying Tucker was too young to make that kind of decision, had finally acquiesced and given him the old snip-snip eight weeks ago. He would not make another woman pregnant, or cause her to go through the horrors and heartache he and Kady had lived through. She’d tried to talk him out of it, saying they were through if he went through with it. But it hadn’t changed his mind.

      It hadn’t changed hers either. Four years of marriage gone, in the blink of an eye.

      He bumped shoulders with someone with a muttered apology as he stepped into the crowded station. On his way back to the hospital, a twelve-hour shift stared him in the face. But at least work kept him from thinking. And the change in venue from Atlanta to New York had meant a fresh start, even if it hadn’t dulled the heartache of the past. Bracing his feet apart and wrapping his fingers around the grab bar over his head, he closed his eyes and let the steady whooshing of the metro keep the painful memories at bay.

      If only they’d known when they’d met, things might have been different.

      No, they wouldn’t. Because while the pregnancy—a year into their relationship—had come as a shock, the tearful yearning in Kady’s eyes as she’d shown him the pregnancy test had won Tucker over. She’d desperately wanted that child. Had wanted him to be happy about it. And in the end he had been. A hurried elopement and whirlwind honeymoon had been just like the rest of their relationship, full of explosive passion that left him breathless. It had been that way the moment they’d laid eyes on each other. The rest was history.

      “No regrets,” she’d said, lifting her glass of sparkling cider and clinking it against his with a laugh. And when Grace had been born... Magic. Pure magic. The perfect world they’d created had seemed complete. Their love unbreakable.

      And yet look at them now.

      He opened his eyes and hardened his heart. This solved nothing and only put him in a bad place. His patients needed him. And he needed them.

      So that’s what he would focus on, and leave all the other stuff behind.

      At least until he hit his bed tonight and fell into an exhausted sleep.

      The subway lurched to a stop, the doors peeled apart, and Tucker joined the throng of people vying for the exit. Seconds later he was headed up the escalator where a shaft of sunlight beckoned, promising a brighter day.

      And, with a little luck, a less painful future.