Dr. Mommy

From Here to Maternity #5

by Elizabeth Bevarly

Clearly this wasn't just another New Year's Eve, but if anything would have surprised obstetrician - yet baby-phobic-Claire Wainwright more than the little pink bundle on her snowy doorstep, it was who came when she called for help: Nick Campisano. the man she'd sent packing years ago...and had never gotten out of her heart. Back then he'd wanted more than she thought she had to give. Now, snowbound with Nick and baby for days on end, she was the one wanting more - of him, in every possible way. Was this one old acquaintance destined not to be forgotten?

Genres: Romance, Category Romance, Contemporary

Mass Market Paperback

First published December 24, 1999

About the author

Elizabeth Bevarly was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky and earned her BA with honors in English from the University of Louisville in 1983. Although she can’t recall ever wanting to be anything but a novelist-oh, all right, she toyed briefly with becoming an archaeologist, until she realized how awful she looked in khaki and flannel, and there was a brief fling with the interior decorator thing, until she realized she had trouble distinguishing chintz from moiré, and… (Where was I? Oh, yeah. My brilliant career.) Anyway, her career side trips before making the leap to writing included stints working as a bartender, a waitress, a movie theater cashier, a soap-hawker for Crabtree & Evelyn, an apparel-hawker for The Limited, and a bridal registry consultant for a major department store. She also did time as an editorial assistant for a medical journal, where she learned the correct spellings and meanings of a variety of words (like microscopy and histological) which, with any luck at all, she will never use again in this life.

She wrote her first novel when she was twelve years old. It was 32 pages long-and that was with college rule notebook paper-and featured three girls named Liz, Marianne and Cheryl, who explored the mysteries of a haunted house. Her friends Marianne and Cheryl proclaimed it “Brilliant! Spellbinding! Kept me up past dinnertime reading!” Those rave reviews only kindled the fire inside her to write more.

Since sixth grade, Elizabeth has gone on to complete more than 60 works of contemporary romance. Her novels regularly appear on the USA Today and Waldenbooks bestseller lists, and The Thing About Men was a New York Times Extended List bestseller. She’s been nominated for the prestigious RITA Award, has won the coveted National Readers’ Choice Award, and Romantic Times magazine has seen fit to honor her with two-count ‘em TWO-Career Achievement Awards. Her books have been translated into two dozen languages and published in three dozen countries, and there are more than ten million copies in print worldwide. She has claimed as residences Washington, DC, northern Virginia, southern New Jersey and Puerto Rico, but she now resides back in her native Kentucky with her husband and son and two very troubled cats where she fully intends to remain.

Reviews

[TINNGG · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of readers I know dislike long separations. I'm mostly indifferent to the plot device but think authors often fail miserably on the execution of bringing them back together. One I read once, the H/h had been college students living together, he packed up and left while she was at school. A decade later, he's assigned to be her bodyguard of sorts and tells her not to bring all that up, so she didn't and they had a HEA. Granted, she shot him but... I thought the shooting bit was the best part.

Anyway. There were things about this that didn't make sense - the h's parents were doctors in the Peace Corps so she changed schools a lot. I would think she would have either spent a lot of time in boarding schools, or been to some interesting places. In any case, sometime around her 15th year, they settled into *a* area and apparently lived there, although they were equally apparently no longer in the picture, whether by death or aliens, the book does not say. The H made a concerted effort to befriend her, but she was always a bit standoffish. I was really puzzled that suddenly she was able to stay in a place for what sounds like 5 or 6 years.

So they dated through the remains of her high school edumacation, through her getting her BS, and just as she got a scholarship to Yale for med school, he proposed. She promptly broke up.

The book never states either one's age; just gives vague ideas that based on some really fuzzy math, they're in their 30s. I'm not sure. Anyway...

An abused kid dropped her baby off on the h's doorstep on New Year's. She called the cops, as you do. He's just getting off work, having worked a double shift, having not had a day off in 2 weeks (don't labor laws apply to cops?). Dispatch sends him to her house where they're snow bound for several days, or until the kid is picked up and they're able to reunite them. Somehow we're expected to believe that 2 days were all that was required to work out the issues...

H had expectations, and made them known when they were dating. He wanted to become a cop. He wanted to buy a house near his parents (yikes), and he wanted the h for a broodmare for his future 6 kids.

Heroine made it known repeatedly that she didn't want kids and that she wanted to become a Dr. Apparently he didn't listen (what the hell did he think she went to college for; learn how to clean skid marks out of his underwear?). So when he proposed, she realized beyond a shadow of a doubt that this WOULD NOT WORK and bailed.

Not the first one I've run into with a neanderthal who thought the little woman's only purpose in his life was to wait on him and pop out babies. Not the first one the "little woman" told him to go to hell either. At least this one did some soul searching when confronted with the reality that her job paid *a lot* better than his did. The other one, the dumb girl didn't have sense enough to go somewhere else and actually get her degree before getting near him again.

I still don't think enough time passed to really work out the issues, and mostly we're shown the baby being essentially used to make her like kids. What would have been amusing in a way would have been her telling him she'd gotten fixed so as to avoid worrying about that...ever.

Of course the epilogue showed them with 4 kids. At least he was a stay-at-home dad BUT...the h being late for work because of his need for attention didn't set well with me.

[Desi · Rating 3 out of 5]

leído el 20/02/2012

UN VIEJO AMOR
Protagonistas: Nick Campisano y Claire Wainwright
Argumento:

Evidentemente, no se trataba de una nochevieja más. Porque si había algo que había podido sorprender más a Claire Wainwright que el descubrimiento de un bebé abandonado en la puerta de su casa, fue el hombre que acudió en su ayuda: Nick Campisano. El hombre con el que había roto años atrás... y que jamás había dejado de estar en su corazón.
En aquel entonces Nick había querido mucho más de lo que ella había creído que podía darle. Ahora, aislada por la nieve en compañía de Nick y del bebé, era Claire la que quería más de él, en todos los sentidos posibles. ¿Estaba aquel antiguo amor destinado a no ser jamás olvidado?

[Linda Verhage · Rating 4 out of 5]

Baby op de stoep

[Sylvia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Modern