A Ring for His Pregnant Midwife
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Amy Ruttan
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CHAPTER ONE
MARCUS WINCED AS he tried to climb out of the narrow bed on his sailboat. He was eight weeks past his transplant surgery, but the incision was still healing.
His new sister-in-law, Dr. Victoria Jensen-Olesen, had given him a clean bill of health, but his body was not bouncing back quite as fast as he would have liked. His brother, Matthew, would say it was because he was getting older, but Matthew was twenty minutes older than he was, so the joke was on him. Marcus was the younger and fitter twin.
In theory.
He winced again and grabbed a pillow to brace his side.
Ugh. Maybe Matthew is right. Maybe I’m getting too old.
He laughed as he stood up.
Truth be told, he was bored out of his mind. He’d had to take a sabbatical from his work as a physician while he healed, and Victoria had warned him that he couldn’t get back to his regular practice until he was twelve weeks postoperative. It felt like an eternity.
Only a month to go.
All he wanted to do was get back to work.
Work kept him sane.
That and women, but since his godson, Jonas, had gotten sick, and Marcus had volunteered to be part of the domino surgery in St. Thomas that would provide Jonas with the kidney he so desperately needed, he hadn’t paid much attention to dating.
Not that he ever dated seriously.
He’d made that mistake once before, and once was more than enough for him to learn his lesson.
In his early twenties, Marcus had fallen in love with Dawna, the smartest and most beautiful woman in med school.
He’d lost his heart to her.
When his brother went off to New York to do a residency in surgery, Marcus had followed Dawna to California and taken a post in the emergency department at a hospital in San Diego. He had learned triage and was one of the best emergency physicians on staff.
Marcus had thought he’d had the future all planned.
He was going to have an extensive practice in San Diego, and then he was going to ask Dawna to be his wife. He had carved out this whole life for them. Unfortunately, Dawna had other plans, and he was left devastated when she left him for an uptight surgeon that sort of reminded him of his twin brother.
It had crushed Marcus to lose the woman of his dreams to a man who was so like Matthew, because he’d spent so much of his youth being told by his parents that he should try to be more like his brother.
Instead of sticking around in California and working with Dawna and her new surgeon husband, Marcus headed back home to the US Virgin Islands to lick his wounds, vowing to never, ever put his heart on the line again.
Famous last words. Look at Matthew.
Marcus ignored that thought and slowly got dressed for another day of sitting around and healing.
“Yo! You up, Marcus?” a voice called from the dock.
Marcus made his way out into the galley of his boat, the Tryphine, and saw his best friend, Jonas’s father, Chase Fredrick, looking down at him from above deck. His friend smiled, but Marcus could instantly tell that there was something wrong with him.
“Chase, it’s not Jonas, is it? I thought he was still in Charlotte Amalie?”
Chase nodded and walked down the stairs into the galley. “Jonas is stable, thanks to that amazing surgery your brother and sister-in-law performed. He’s taken well to his anti-rejection medicines, and he’s due to be released soon,”
Marcus smiled. “Good. I’m glad to hear it. What can I help you with then?”
“You’re not back to work yet, are you?”
Marcus shook his head. “Nope. I haven’t been cleared to practice yet. What’s wrong? Is something wrong with Pepper?”
Pepper was Chase’s wife and Jonas’s mother, and she was currently pregnant with their second child. Pepper had had problems when delivering Jonas, so the couple was understandably nervous about this new pregnancy.
“Actually, there is something wrong. You know that St. John is having a shortage of midwives, especially midwives that can handle the kind of issues Pepper had previously?”
“Right.”
Chase rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “Our midwife, who is from England and who is so phenomenal, is about to get deported.”
Marcus’s eyes widened. “Deported?”
“Her visa’s up,” Chase said. “She’s helped women like Pepper before and successfully dealt with preeclampsia and sickle cell disease. She’s so knowledgeable and Pepper adores this midwife. Completely trusts her and no one else.”
“Well, I’m sorry to say that she might not have a choice if her midwife is going to be deported.”
“Well, that’s where you come in.” There was a nervous tone to Chase’s voice, and Marcus had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“What do you mean?” he asked carefully.
“Well... I don’t know how to ask you this since you’ve done so much for our family already, but I’m desperate. I don’t have any other single friends.”
Marcus suddenly felt like he was going to be sick and he sat down, bracing himself. “Chase...what exactly are you asking me?”
“Would you ever consider a marriage of convenience?”
Marcus started to laugh at the absurdity of the question. “Be serious.”
“I am being serious.”
Marcus stopped laughing and cocked an eyebrow at his best friend. “You’ve been so stressed going back and forth between Ziese Memorial Hospital and home, plus dealing with a pregnant wife. You’re obviously overtired and talking nonsense.”
“I’m not!”
“So you’re serious?” Marcus asked in disbelief.
“Deadly. I have a clearer head than you, not to mention the fact that I’m younger and better looking.”
“That’s what I tell my brother.”
“And that’s what I’m telling you,” Chase teased.
Marcus rolled his eyes. “Uh-huh. I would believe what you were saying if you weren’t proposing such an insane idea. You can’t be serious.”
Chase nodded. “I’m being serious. Look, it’s the only way I can think of keeping her in the country. You know that Pepper has sickle cell anemia, and this midwife is the best we’ve seen. I don’t trust Pepper in anyone else’s hands.”
Marcus sighed.
It was a big ask, but he could tell that Chase was desperate, and he knew his friend had undoubtedly thought of everything else before proposing this idea. Chase knew about his past with Dawna, and he also knew that Chase wouldn’t have made this big ask if it wasn’t his last resort option.
“The doctors in Charlotte Amalie could take care of Pepper, Chase.”
“I know, but Pepper is really comfortable with Alexis, and Pepper isn’t her only patient. There are others, and everyone loves Alexis on the north side of the island. We can’t lose her.”
Marcus sighed again. “I don’t know. How long would this take? How long would I have to be married to this person?”
“Two years, give or take.”
“Two years?” Marcus shook his head. “I can’t do that.”
“I know it’s a long time.”
“It’s more than just a long time—it’s years. Not days or months, but years! Can you imagine me married for that long? I have no desire to have a wife or be a husband. Real or imagined.”
“Not even a fake husband?” Chase asked, with hope.
“Not even that. Imagined means fake. Not real. No. It’s not happening.”
“I know you swore off marriage and relationships a long time ago...much to Pepper’s chagrin.” Chase smiled and Marcus chuckled.
Pepper had been trying for years to set him up with the right woman, and Marcus had managed to rebuff her at every turn. Matthew’s late wife, Kirsten, and Pepper had also teamed up for a while, but Marcus just couldn’t let go of how much Dawna had hurt him.
You’re afraid. That’s why.
Marcus shook that thought away. “What does this fake marriage entail?”
Chase grinned. “Just a quick trip down the aisle so that Alexis can apply for her green card. Any immigrant with a pending green card application is allowed to remain in the US until the application has been decided on, which means not only will Alexis be able to stay and see Pepper through a safe delivery, she can also help countless other mothers-to-be while she waits for her green card to be approved. Once she has it, you can get a quickie divorce.”
“You know this is fraud, don’t you?” Marcus asked dryly.
“Yes, but I’m desperate. Alexis is an asset both to Pepper and to the medical profession. She deserves to stay, and I know her application will be approved, so all we’re really doing is helping the process along so that she can keep helping women like Pepper.”
“Pepper needs to stop reading so many romance novels. I’m sure that’s where she came up with this crackpot idea.”
Chase laughed. “She’s hooked on Mills & Boon, what can I say?”
Marcus stood and sighed. “Does this Alexis person know of this plan?”
“She does, but she’s not convinced. Yet. I’m confident we can talk her around to it. Together.”
Marcus groaned. “Now, I suppose?”
“You have something better to do? You’re on medical leave.”
“You’re being awfully pushy today, Chase,” Marcus groused.
Chase grinned. “No more than usual.”
Marcus shook his head and grudgingly finished getting dressed. “You owe me big-time, Chase. Big!”
“I know.” Chase climbed up the stairs and stepped out onto the deck to let Marcus get ready in private, but turned back at the last second, and Marcus could see he was worrying his bottom lip.
“What now?” Marcus asked with trepidation.
“The thing is, she’s also pregnant.”
“Pepper? I know Pepper is pregnant.”
“No, our midwife.”
All the blood drained from Marcus’s head, and there was a strange ringing in his ears.
Surely he hadn’t heard Chase correctly. It sounded like the most absurd thing ever.
“She’s pregnant?”
Chase nodded. “Yeah, the father of the child left her and doesn’t want anything to do with the baby.”
“I can’t get involved with a pregnant woman. I’m not involving a child in this kind of...of ruse. It’s two years or more before she’d get her green card. It’s somewhat acceptable when it’s just two consenting adults involved, but she’s pregnant and that child will be born into a union that isn’t genuine. This isn’t right.”
“It’s not a ruse. She’ll get her green card. She just needs a husband on paper for the time being. You don’t have to be a father, and the child never has to know.”
He was surprised to find that that stung.
Marcus had always wanted to be a father. One day.
He shook his head.
Of course Marcus was worried about Pepper, and he knew that if this midwife was as good as Chase believed, it would be an asset to keep her in St. John. But was this truly the only way?
Aren’t you a little too old to take part in a scheme like this?
Marcus shook that thought away, and he couldn’t help but wonder what Matthew would think if he knew what was happening. He could only imagine that he would disapprove. Matthew was always the responsible one, but he wasn’t sure about that now. Victoria had certainly relaxed his uptight brother.
Maybe he would think this was smart, a straightforward way to help multiple people.
Doubtful. It’s fraud.
A quick search on Google told Marcus that he would essentially be tricking the government so that this midwife could stay in the country. If they got caught, she’d be deported and he would be fined, jailed and would probably lose his medical license.
All reasons to say no.
The thing was, he wanted to help Pepper and because he wasn’t allowed to return to work for another four weeks, he had time on his hands to at least meet this woman and talk about the possibility. He wasn’t planning to ever get married for real, so maybe there was no harm in a convenient marriage for the time being.
Of course, he wouldn’t completely know if it would work until he met Alexis. He hoped he liked her so they could pull this off.
You’re doing this for Pepper and Chase.
They had always been there for him. Especially in the years after he had came back from California, when his heart was in tatters after Dawna, when his brother wasn’t part of his life and his parents were too busy traveling around the world to recognize that their son was hurting.
Chase and Pepper had been his family.
He could do this for his family.
Couldn’t he?
Alexis winced.
Great.
She had to use the bathroom.
Again.
Pregnancy was the miracle of life and Alexis had always envied her patients secretly, but this having to go to the bathroom every few minutes was getting old quickly.
Not that she really minded, of course. For most of her adult life, she’d been told by her own OB/GYN in London that she had unexplained infertility and so the fact that she was pregnant at all was a miracle.
She and her ex-husband had tried everything over the years, desperate to have a child, a family.
At least that’s what she’d thought they both wanted.
The moment she finally became pregnant was the exact moment that her husband, Bruce, the man she’d loved for the last five years, told her that he actually didn’t want a family. He thought that she would eventually give up trying to get pregnant when all the avenues had failed, and then they could enjoy their life together.
He’d been so angry six months ago when he found out she was pregnant.
And then he’d left her and filed for divorce. His reason? That she deceived him. He claimed he had married her specifically because he believed she couldn’t have children, and so the pregnancy voided their agreement.
If that wasn’t the complete kicker, he also quickly began a new relationship with someone else.
It was then that Alexis knew that it wasn’t the pregnancy that had made him end their marriage. Bruce had moved on from her long before that, and had been making plans to leave. It crushed her completely, but it also gave her the push she needed to close that chapter of her life. There was no point in trying to hold on to something that toxic.
She’d been blinded by love, and she wasn’t going to let that happen ever again.
Alexis gladly signed the decree of divorce and made sure that Bruce signed over all claims to their unborn child so that she would have sole custody and parental control once the baby was born. She wasn’t going to have him swoop in later and try to disrupt her child’s life. She’d had a father like that—an absentee father who cared more about his work than his family—and she wouldn’t put her own child through that.
She’d seen the toll it had taken on her mother.
It was still a burden on her to this day.
There were times when Alexis had wanted to tell her mother to run, but she knew her mother would never listen to her. So instead of having her baby go through that, Alexis sold her flat in London for a tidy sum, quit her practice and headed to the US Virgin Islands on a short-term contract.
An escape to paradise had sounded like the perfect next step.
The problem was that now that her four-month work visa was up, she found that she didn’t want to leave St. John. She was in love with the island, the people and all of her patients.
Alexis had never felt more at home than she did here.
This was where she wanted to raise her child.
The problem was, she couldn’t stay.
It was breaking her heart. As if in response to her worried thoughts, there was a tiny kick, almost like a nudge or a poke. Alexis smiled and rubbed the small swell in her lower belly.
“I know you want to stay, too.”
“Are you talking to yourself again?”
Alexis looked up from her desk in the clinic to see Chase Fredrick standing in the doorway. Her stomach sank.
“Is it Pepper? Is she having a flare-up?” Alexis asked nervously.
Pepper Fredrick was one of the patients that Alexis didn’t want to leave.
The woman had a lot going on—her son had recently had a kidney transplant in a major domino surgery, and she was eight months pregnant and high risk. She had sickle cell anemia, and Alexis had been surprised to find that none of the other midwives she worked with on St. John had dealt with it before. Alexis had seen it many times and Pepper was in her care, but beyond that, Pepper and Chase had been like a surrogate family to her since she’d arrived.
And she didn’t want to leave them.
She wanted her baby and Pepper’s baby to be best friends.
Alexis had never experienced the support and the community that she got here and couldn’t imagine finding it again anywhere else. Even though she had biological family in England, she was mostly alone there.
Plus England reminded her of Bruce and his betrayal. It held too much sadness, too many memories she wanted to leave behind for good.
St. John made her happy and this is where she wanted to stay, but she had to go back to England. She had been so busy with work she’d left things too late. By the time she returned to England and applied for another visa, she’d be too pregnant to travel back safely and she’d be stuck, unable to be here to help Pepper through what would be a tricky final few weeks of her pregnancy.
“No, it’s not Pepper. Pepper is fine. I’ve come here to tell you that I have a solution to your problem!”
Alexis cocked an eyebrow. She was intrigued.
“You have a solution to indigestion and my need to use the bathroom every five minutes?” she teased.
Chase grinned. “No, but wouldn’t that solve a lot of problems? I have a solution to your visa problem. I have a way to keep you in the country.”
Alexis smiled. A miracle solution at this late stage seemed too good to be true. She’d already spent ages racking her brain, trying to think of something—anything—that would keep her here legally, but she hadn’t come up with anything.
“What is it?” she asked, trying not to appear too eager or to get her hopes up.
“Well, it was Pepper’s idea actually.”
As soon as he said that, Alexis knew exactly what Chase was going to say, because Pepper had already suggested it to her. She had come up with some inventive ideas in the short time she had known her, but her latest had taken the cake. It was straight out of one of those novels that Pepper was devouring regularly.
And that was the problem with it.
It was fiction.
It wasn’t real life. People did not have marriage of conveniences. It was too far-fetched.
“No. Absolutely not. I’m not getting married,” Alexis said quickly.
That was a hard pass for her. There was no way that she was putting herself through that again. Bruce had hurt her, shattered her trust. She would have to be an absolute raving lunatic to try and attempt another marriage.
Even if it was fake.
“How did you...? Oh. Pepper already told you, didn’t she?”
Alexis nodded and stood up. “She did and it’s a wild notion. Stuff like that doesn’t happen in real life.”
“Of course it does,” Chase said. “People pretend to be married all the time. This is your only option, Alexis. It’s not a real marriage. You just have to pretend for a while so you can stay in the country.”
“A green card takes a long time, Chase. You do realize that?” she asked.
Chase nodded. “Of course.”
“Who is going to be fake married to me for two-plus years without some kind of compensation? I can’t afford that.”
“The man in question doesn’t want compensation.”
“So he’s doing it out of the goodness of his heart?” she asked in disbelief.
“Yes.” Chase grinned.
“Seems too good to be true.”
“Some would say that about him. Not me, mind you. What do you say, Alexis?”
Alexis worried her bottom lip.
She really did want to stay in the country. She wanted to be able to take care of her patients, and she wanted her and her baby to start a new life here.
She’d never really been happy in England, but here in St. John she’d discovered her happy place. She loved everything about this island. The warm breezes, the greenery, the people, the food, the white sand beaches and the turquoise sea.
There were so many mornings where she would just sit at the window in her small room, staring out over the water and watching the big cruise ships slowly sail by on their way to Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas.
It made her want to explore even more, to see all the different corners of St. Croix and then maybe even leave the US Virgin Islands and head out to other countries like Jamaica, Haiti, or Cuba. Maybe even farther south.
She always had a secret dream of getting a boat and sailing around the world.
Bruce hadn’t been into that idea.
She should’ve taken it as a warning sign, but she’d been young and in love.
Alexis shook her head, clearing her dreams out of her mind so that she could focus on what Chase was saying.
“If I do decide to attempt this idea of Pepper’s, who is going to agree to marry me?”
Chase grinned, his brown eyes twinkling. “I have just the man for you. A stand-up citizen and native son to the islands. Alexis Martin, may I introduce you to your future husband and my best friend, Dr. Marcus Olesen.”
Alexis’s eyes widened when she realized Chase had brought the man with him, and the moment that this Marcus Olesen walked into her office her breath was nearly taken away. Her pulse quickened as she gazed into the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. He had sandy blond hair that was a little longer than she usually liked, but somehow it suited him. He had a neatly trimmed beard, and the way his eyes twinkled at her made her knees shake.
A little voice inside Alexis told her that this man was a bit of a rogue—that he could be dangerous to her heart—and she was annoyed the way her body responded to him.
The way he took her breath away.
It took her a minute to find her voice as she was forced to swallow the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she finally squeaked out.
He smiled, but that smile didn’t extend to his eyes, which made her suspect that he wasn’t exactly a willing participant in this either.
“Pleasure,” he said stiffly. His gaze roved over her body in a way that made her blood heat and yet made her feel vulnerable.
Naked.
Exposed.
This man was a definite danger. He was a temptation.
Chase was still smiling, obviously proud of himself and confident that this had worked out and was already a done deal. “I’m going to figure out what we have to do next about the marriage, so I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.”
Alexis didn’t want to be alone to Marcus. Not that she didn’t trust him, but because he was making her feel things she hadn’t felt in a long time and she didn’t ever want to feel this way again. She was almost annoyed with herself for having had such a strong initial reaction to him.
“So...” she said once they were alone, her voice shaking ever so slightly.
Marcus shoved his hands in the pockets of his khaki-colored Bermuda shorts. “So, when are we going to get on with this sham?”
