Spotlight & Giveaway: Surgeon’s Surprise Baby by Eve Gaddy

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Eve Gaddy’s new release: Surgeon’s Surprise Baby

One woman. One baby. One chance to make it right.

After leaving the army, surgeon Ryan Hunter lives by one rule– stay safe. He never remains anywhere or with anyone for too long. And then he meets Aria DeLuca, and for two years, he breaks all his rules. When he realizes he’s fallen in love, he walks away, heading to Marietta, Montana.

Aria never expected forever. Her relationship with Ryan was supposed to be strings-free but tell her heart that. After Ryan leaves, she discovers she’s pregnant. Wrestling with her decision to keep her pregnancy a secret, Aria changes her mind after Sophie is born. Her daughter deserves to have a chance to know her father. But she is leery as Aria knows firsthand the pain of having a father walk away.

Aria arrives in Marietta—with a baby and a dream of opening a plant nursery. Ryan breaking her heart again is not an option.

Loving Aria and their daughter, Sophie, is easy. Believing he deserves them is not. Can Ryan prove he’s done running before the family he never knew he wanted slips away for good?

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from Surgeon’s Surprise Baby 

I must be crazy.

Driving from Colorado to Montana, with a baby in the back seat, and pulling a U-Haul trailer full of plants and a few necessities, mostly for the baby, proved it.

Near the end of her six weeks of maternity leave, Aria DeLuca realized she didn’t want to put her baby Sophie in day care and go back to work. She’d liked her job as a hospital administrator in Denver, but she didn’t love it. Her real love was plants. And Sophie, of course.

Her beautiful three-month-old baby was the light of her life. Not that Sophie wasn’t difficult at times. Two in the morning with a hysterically crying, inconsolable child was not fun. Especially when she had no one else to help her. She had no husband or lover. Her father had never been around, and her mother had died several years before. She had no other close relatives. Her friends were busy with their own lives. Her best friend had moved to Steamboat, Colorado, to become a ski instructor. All of which left her basically on her own.

Running on very little sleep for days on end was hard. But whenever she looked at Sophie, at her perfect features, felt her soft skin, ran her fingers through her silky hair, and smelled her baby smell, she knew she was the luckiest woman in the world. Sophie was a gorgeous baby, and her mother wasn’t the only one who thought so. Strangers had stopped her to comment on how pretty her baby was.

Aria didn’t want a job. She wanted a business of her own. A nursery business. Her one-bedroom apartment was overrun with plants. At the moment, including her African violets, she had sixty-something plants of various species. Okay, so she was a little obsessed with plants. Always had been. In high school she’d worked in a nursery, so she knew something about the business. Ever since she’d gotten pregnant she’d been thinking of starting her own business. She had start-up money. She’d lived fairly cheaply and managed to sock away quite a bit, so she and Sophie could live on that until she got her business going.

She didn’t intend to start her business in Denver. She wanted a small town, probably rural. Her research led her to Marietta, Montana. It sounded like the perfect choice for her. There was only one problem. Marietta was home to Ryan Hunter. Ryan, who had no idea that she’d been pregnant when he left town and that she’d given birth to his child.

She hadn’t talked to Ryan since he left Denver. She knew he was going to Marietta, Montana, where an army buddy of his lived and worked. Honestly, that was the reason she’d looked at Marietta in the first place. They’d parted amicably, as far as Ryan was concerned, anyway. It wasn’t his fault she still loved him. He didn’t know because she’d never told him. They’d never discussed love. Oh, they’d decided to be exclusive after the first time they slept together but love? Nope, not ever. So Ryan had left, just as he left every place eventually.

Once she discovered she was pregnant she knew she’d have the baby. Which gave her a lot of other choices to make. At first, she wasn’t sure she’d even tell him. They’d both agreed to a no-strings relationship. Either one of them could call it quits with no hard feelings. The last thing Ryan had wanted was to be tied down. A baby would do that, no question.

When she’d decided not to go back to her job and to start her own business she’d looked for a good place to raise her child. Marietta sounded like a great place. It was small and rural, and from what she could tell, there was no other dedicated nursery business there. She had no idea whether Ryan would stick around once he found out about Sophie, but she planned to put down roots regardless of how things worked out—or more likely didn’t work out with him.

So here she was, trying to figure out how to tell him. Hey, guess what? You’re a dad. Or, Surprise! You have a daughter. Sorry, I know it wasn’t in your plans but she’s here and she’s wonderful.

She didn’t have to decide right away. She had time before she tracked him down. Time to think of a really good way to tell him he was a father.

Dr. Ryan Hunter walked out of the OR, more tired than he normally was from a three-and-a-half-hour operation. Of course, this operation had been the opposite of mundane. The patient had fallen down a crevasse while mountain climbing and had been helicoptered in to the Marietta Hospital ER with life-threatening injuries. His fractured leg had been stabilized on the way. Ordinarily, that injury would have taken precedent; however, the patient’s worst injuries had been a splenic laceration as well as a hepatic laceration. He’d had to remove the spleen quickly in order to control the bleeding, but he’d been able to save most of the liver. Assuming his patient had no complications from either the surgery Ryan performed, or the surgery he would undoubtedly undergo for his leg, the man should recover fully.

But damn, that had been close. Not as bad as some of the surgeries he’d performed as a combat surgeon several years ago, plus he’d had the advantage of not having to do it under fire. But still a difficult surgery.

When he’d moved to Marietta from Denver, he hadn’t expected his job to be as challenging as it was. Marietta was a small rural community, but the hospital was first class. It had grown in the last several years from a relatively small hospital to draw from a wide area, and the ER was a level II emergency room with an emergency medical services that included a helicopter service.

Ryan liked to move around. Or rather, he seemed unable to settle down in one place for too long. He’d stayed in Denver longer than usual. While he liked Marietta and his job at the hospital better, there was one thing Denver had that Marietta didn’t. One person. Aria DeLuca.

If you’d told him when he left Denver that months later he’d still be thinking about Aria, still wondering if he’d made a mistake leaving her, he’d have laughed. Sure, she was smart, beautiful, and smoking hot. But he wasn’t up for anything permanent, and neither was she. They’d established that from the start of their relationship. They were both in it for fun, and it had been. So much so that he’d thought about staying. He’d moved on, though, knowing he was still too messed up from his army career to try for permanency anywhere. But damn, he missed her.

After being discharged, his friend and fellow veteran Connor McFarland had become a flight paramedic, then gone back to his hometown of Marietta, Montana, to practice. Somewhat to Ryan’s surprise, Connor had married a flight nurse he’d met in Las Vegas but who’d moved to Marietta. Ryan had figured Connor for even more of a confirmed bachelor than he was but having met Sierra, Ryan could see the appeal. It was good to know that Connor had been able to move on with his life. Too bad he couldn’t. At any rate, once the move-on bug had bitten him he’d talked to Connor and eventually moved to Marietta to practice at the same hospital as his friend.

He liked Marietta. He liked his job. He’d made new friends as well as being around Connor. His buddy knew how the war had impacted him. Hell, Connor had been a combat medic at the same field hospital as Ryan and had once been almost as screwed up as he was. But apparently marrying Sierra had helped him come to terms with his demons.

Ryan had dated since moving to Marietta. He could hardly help it with Sierra and her married friends trying to set him up with every unattached female in town. But he hadn’t found a woman he’d clicked with. To the point that he hadn’t had sex since … Well, since he left Denver. Aria DeLuca was a tough act to follow.

He’d almost called her many times. But there was no point to it. Aria had made it clear she had no desire for a long-distance relationship. She wasn’t angry with him for leaving. In fact, it hadn’t seemed to bother her much at all. Which had dented his ego pretty solidly. He’d thought if not for his screwed-up psyche, they could have had something.

Dammit, here he went again, thinking about a woman he should have long been over. But even after months away from her, he clearly wasn’t over her. Talk about being screwed up.

Ryan was no gourmet cook, but he’d gotten sick of eating out constantly shortly after he was discharged. He had no other choice but to learn to feed himself. Nothing fancy, but he could make the basics. He usually put off grocery shopping until he was low on everything, and this time was no different. He was picking up olive oil when his gaze caught on a woman with her back to him. Long, dark hair to the middle of her back. Curves that could make a man crazy to run his hands over them. Familiar curves.

Not possible, he thought. What would Aria DeLuca be doing in Marietta, at the grocery store yet? Still, he couldn’t help saying, “Aria?”

She turned her head and her eyes widened. “Ryan.”

Damn, he’d been right. “In the flesh. It’s good to see you. Are you here for long?” He wanted to ask what the hell she was doing here but he figured she’d tell him.

“Yes.” She stepped aside and gestured at the baby carrier in her shopping cart. “We just moved here.”

We? Moved here? He stepped closer to look at the baby. Two or three months old, maybe, although he was no judge of a baby’s age. A beautiful child with a peaches-and-cream complexion and dark, curly hair. Sleeping peacefully with a pacifier in her mouth. He counted back to the last time he’d been with Aria. The night before he left town to move to Marietta. Which was way too soon for the baby to be as old as she was.

Aria had to have been pregnant when he left.

Holy shit.

“Is she—” He broke off, unable to complete the question.

“Yes, she’s yours. I’m sorry. This wasn’t how I planned to tell you.”

A baby. He had a baby. He was a father. He stared at the baby, then at Aria. She was as beautiful as ever, maybe even more so. Her model’s face with high cheekbones, a gorgeous complexion, a firm but feminine chin, luscious lips. In short, she was a showstopper. “How … When …”

“Excuse me,” an irritated voice said.

Ryan realized they were completely blocking the aisle. He moved his cart to allow the grumpy woman to pass. Stunned, he was at a total loss for words.

The baby started to fuss. Aria said, “I need to get her home before she melts down. Are you free?”

He managed to nod.

“Come to my house,” she said and gave him the address. “Give me about an hour. We can talk there.”

She walked off, pushing the cart. The cart with his baby in it.

Excerpt. ©Eve Gaddy. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 

Giveaway: An ebook copy of SURGEON’S SURPRISE BABY + one additional Tule ebook of the winner’s choice

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Meet the Author:

Eve Gaddy is the award winning, national bestselling author of forty novels. Her books have sold over a million copies and been published in many countries and several languages. She writes contemporary romance, romantic suspense, romantic mystery, and a bit of paranormal romance as well.

Eve’s books have won and been nominated for awards from Romantic Times, Golden Quill, Bookseller’s Best, Holt Medallion, Daphne Du Maurier and many more. Eve was awarded the 2008 Romantic Times Career Achievement award for Series Storyteller of the year, and was nominated for a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for Innovative Series romance. She loves her family, books, electronics, the mountains, and East Texas in the spring and fall. She also loves a happy ending. That’s why she writes romance.

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