by Kate Hardy
‘You didn’t have to do that.’
‘I wanted breakfast, and it’s as quick to make it for two as for one,’ she said.
He looked exhausted. The worry and the emotions from yesterday had clearly taken it out of him.
‘Thanks.’
She didn’t push him to talk, but after breakfast when he went to have a shower she finished the washing up, then sat on the floor with the dog.
‘I’m so sorry about what happened,’ she said, stroking the top of Truffle’s head. ‘It was totally my fault and I shouldn’t have been careless with you. I know what it feels like when someone’s careless with you.’ She bit her lip. ‘I feel bad that I hurt Ryan as much as Charlie hurt me. I don’t know how I’m going to make it up to him, but I’m just going to have to try harder.’
* * *
I hurt Ryan as much as Charlie hurt me.
The words echoed in Ryan’s head and he couldn’t quite make sense of them.
From what Georgie had told him, Charlie had been a hero. He’d been killed in a landslide while he’d been out helping in an earthquake disaster zone. And she’d been crying a few days ago on her wedding anniversary, which told Ryan that she was still deeply in mourning for her late husband.
But now he wondered. How deeply would you mourn someone who’d hurt you?
She’d said that someone had been careless with her, and that Charlie had hurt her. Were those two statements related or separate? What had happened?
Not that he could ask. He’d have to wait until Georgie was ready to talk about it—if she ever was. But, with this and the couple of things she’d already let slip, it seemed everything hadn’t been quite as wonderful in her marriage as he’d originally thought.
He walked more heavily down the stairs so she’d be aware of his presence; it would give her time to get herself together if she needed to.
‘Thank you for keeping an eye on Truffle for me,’ he said when he went into the living room.
‘It’s the least I could do.’ She paused. ‘I’ve been thinking—maybe we should look at the roster again and try to move our shifts so one of us is on an early while the other’s on a late, so Truffle has company as much as possible. And if you can teach me what sort of things to do to keep her occupied, I’ll do my best.’
She really was trying hard to make up for what she’d done.
And, now he was pretty sure Truffle was going to be all right, his anger had dissipated. ‘Thank you. And I’m sorry I took it out on you yesterday, when I was worried about Truffle. It wasn’t fair of me.’
She lifted her chin. ‘I deserved everything you said. You’d warned me she’s an absconder. I should have checked the door properly. The stupid thing is, in London I would’ve double-checked; I know it’s no excuse, but here it feels safer.’
‘Here, it is safer,’ he said.
‘But I still should’ve checked, and I’m sorry. And I was going to say to you yesterday, I’ll cover the vet’s bill because it was my fault.’
‘She’s insured,’ he said. ‘But I appreciate the back-up for keeping her occupied. She’s going to be bored.’
‘Just tell me what the doggy equivalent to reading a gazillion stories and doing art stuff is,’ she said.
‘Is that what you do with your niece?’
‘That and dancing,’ she said. ‘But you want Truffle to rest physically as much as possible, right? So not the doggy equivalent of dancing.’
He could imagine Georgie sitting with her niece on her lap, reading stories, or at the table, drawing and making models from play dough. And from there it was a tiny step to imagining her doing that with her own child. A little girl who was the spit of her mother—but with grey eyes and dark auburn hair, like his own.
Oh, help.
He’d never imagined himself as a father before. Not with Zoe, even though he’d loved her. But maybe that was because he and Zoe hadn’t been quite the right fit.
Was he the right fit with Georgie?
The idea sent him into a flat spin. He was worried sick about the one constant in his life, the dog he regarded as his entire family. Right now, he didn’t have the headspace to face the ghosts of his past and work out whether he could deal with them.
Knowing that he was being a coward, but doing it anyway, he said, ‘I’ll just go and get some more bread from the farm shop before you leave for work, if that’s OK?’
‘Sure. Truffle and I are going to watch a rerun of Friends,’ she said.
She was actually sitting on the floor with the dog now, taking as much care of her as Ryan would himself, and it made him feel as if something had cracked around his heart. Something that started to let the light in.
* * *
The feeling intensified over the next couple of days. Georgie was really, really good with Truffle. She was patient, she kept the dog amused and helped tire her out so she wasn’t fractious. He could trust her with his dog; so maybe, even though the idea of letting anyone that close to him terrified him, he could trust her with himself. Trust that even when her six-month job swap was up, she’d work with him to find a way for them to stay together.
But she was behaving more like a best friend than anything else. How could he explain to her that his feelings towards her were changing—that he was starting to want things he’d always believed he didn’t? And that he wanted them with her?
* * *
Sharing a house with Ryan was driving Georgie crackers. He’d made it very clear that he wanted nothing more than friendship from her—that he didn’t want to get involved with anyone again, and he wasn’t going to act on the attraction between them, despite that kiss.
Maybe a mad fling would get him out of her system.
But Georgie didn’t want a mad fling. If anything was going to happen between them, she wanted more than one night; she wanted to see where it would take them.
Which left them at stalemate, because Ryan McGregor was one of the most stubborn men she’d ever met.
She was working in the PAU at lunchtime on the Saturday when a four-year-old girl came in. Jennie had had a cold, which had then turned into a cough that wouldn’t go away. Her mum said it was worse at night but thought all colds were like that; and now Jennie was struggling to breathe, her chest was wheezy and she’d complained of chest pain. There was obvious sucking in at the base of her throat.
All the signs told Georgie that this was probably asthma, but she wanted to run an ECG to check the little girl’s heart. She went in search of someone to help her do the ECG while she did a full examination, and Ryan just happened to be in the corridor.
‘Everything OK?’ he asked.
‘No, I have a patient with suspected asthma and I want to run an ECG, so I need someone in with me to do that while I help her with her breathing.’
‘I’ll do it,’ he said.
He was too senior for this, really, but she wasn’t going to argue; she wanted to help her patient now.
She took him back to the treatment room and introduced him to Jennie and her mum.
‘Is there any asthma or hay fever or allergies in your family?’ Ryan asked.
Jennie’s mum shook her head. ‘Not in her dad’s, either. Is that what you think it is?’
‘It’s possible,’ Georgie said. ‘But we’ll concentrate on getting Jennie breathing easily before we run some tests.’
‘Can you sit up straight for us, Jennie?’ Ryan asked. ‘That’ll make it easier for you to breathe.’
The little girl nodded, a tear running down her face, and sat up straight.
‘That’s really good,’ Georgie said. ‘Now I’d like you to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Take it slowly. All the way in, all the way out.’
She guided Jennie through the breathing; once the little girl seemed calmer, she fitted a blue inhaler into a spacer. �
�This is special medication to help you breathe,’ she said. ‘I want you to hold the tube for me, and put the mouthpiece in your mouth. I’m going to press this bit on the end to put the medicine in the tube and I want you to breathe in to make the tube whistle for me. Can you do that?’
Jennie nodded again, and did what Georgie asked.
‘That’s brilliant,’ Ryan said. ‘You’re being so brave.’ He glanced at his watch and counted off a minute. ‘Another big breath in of the medicine?’
They repeated a puff of the inhaler per minute for ten puffs, then checked Jennie’s oxygen saturation levels. Ryan distracted Jennie with a series of terrible jokes while Georgie took bloods, and then Georgie put sticky pads on Jennie’s chest so they could run an ECG.
‘The pattern on this paper is a picture of how your heart is beating,’ Ryan said. ‘And that’s beautifully normal.’
Jennie’s mum looked relieved. ‘So is it asthma?’ she asked.
‘Coughing and wheezing can be caused by things other than asthma,’ Georgie said, ‘and Jennie’s too young to do some of the tests to show how her lungs are working, so I know this is going to be frustrating but we’ll need to do a trial of treatment for the next few weeks.’
‘We can give you a blue inhaler and a spacer like this one for her to use when she has bad symptoms,’ Ryan said. ‘The inhaler will give Jennie a dose of corticosteroids—they’re the ones the body produces naturally, not the ones you hear of bodybuilders taking—and using it in the form of an inhaler means that the medicine goes straight into her airways. It’ll open them up and help keep her safe while we’re trying to work out what’s causing the problem.’
‘And we’ll need you to keep a diary for your doctor,’ Georgie said. ‘So when Jennie has symptoms, write down what they are, the date and time, what the weather’s like and what’s happening at the time—so if there’s a pet nearby, or it’s really cold, or she was running about. I can print something out for you to make it easier to remember.’
‘Thank you,’ Jennie’s mum said.
‘This is going to sound a bit callous,’ Ryan said, ‘but when she’s wheezing or coughing, if you record her on your phone it will really help your doctor or the asthma nurse hear what her symptoms are like.’
‘And then if you can write down how many puffs she takes of the inhaler, and whether that helps her, it stays the same or it gets worse,’ Georgie said. ‘The more information you can give, the more it will help your doctor to spot the patterns and make a firm diagnosis.’
‘I’ll make sure I do that,’ Jennie’s mum said.
‘That’s great,’ Georgie said. ‘I’ll give you an action plan for the next couple of months so you can share it with Jennie’s nursery, your family and friends, so then they’ll know what to do if she gets any asthma symptoms. The action plan tells you how to spot the early signs of problems and what to do.’
‘If she needs to use an inhaler more than three times a week,’ Ryan said, ‘then your asthma nurse will give you a brown preventer inhaler, which Jennie needs to take every day to help stop her getting the symptoms in the first place. But let’s see how we go in the next couple of months. Obviously, if you’re worried, see your doctor; and if the inhaler doesn’t help, bring her straight back here.’
‘Thank you,’ Jennie’s mum said.
Ryan crouched down so he was at Jennie’s level. ‘You’ve been really brave.’ He produced a sparkly ‘I was brave’ sticker from his pocket. ‘So I think you deserve this.’
‘Thank you,’ Jennie said shyly.
Georgie printed out the action plan and asthma diary for Jennie’s mum, and helped her fill it in. ‘We’ll obviously send all the details to your family doctor, but do go and make an appointment to see the asthma specialist in eight weeks’ time.’
‘I will,’ Jennie’s mum promised, and took her daughter’s hand.
Why was it, Georgie wondered, that she and Ryan were so in tune at work, virtually able to finish each other’s sentences—and yet when it came to their personal life, he backed away from her? She really thought they could be good together.
But if Ryan wasn’t prepared to give them a chance, there was nothing she could do to change his mind. She’d have to give up. And next year, when she went back to London, he’d fade out of her life.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘ONLY A MEAL for one tonight?’ Janie asked, looking surprised.
‘It’s the departmental night out,’ Ryan explained. ‘I’m staying at home with Truffle so Georgie can go.’
‘If Truffle hadn’t had her accident, would you have been going?’ Janie asked.
Ryan grimaced. ‘Probably. Though only because I wouldn’t have had a good excuse not to go.’
‘What’s the problem?’ Janie asked.
‘It’s a ceilidh.’ If he didn’t dance with Georgie, people would notice and start speculating; if he did dance with her, he’d end up thinking of the night he’d kissed her and the morning she’d woken in his arms. Which would be a bad idea for both of them, because he still hadn’t sorted his head out.
‘Dancing’s good for you. You’re a doctor, so you should know that,’ Janie said with a grin. ‘What’s the real problem?’
His head was completely mixed up when it came to Georgie: though he wasn’t telling Janie that. ‘I delegated the organisation to one of my colleagues. She says all the men have to wear kilts.’
‘And you don’t have one?’ She smiled at him. ‘No problem. My Donald’s about your size. He can lend you one.’
‘I have a kilt,’ Ryan said.
‘Then there’s no problem, is there?’ Janie said. ‘Truffle can have a sleepover with me and Donald, so you don’t have to worry about getting back early for her. You work hard enough. You deserve a break. A night out will do you good.’ She took the foil tray of casserole from his basket. ‘I’m not selling you that. You go dancing in that kilt. And no arguments from you, or I’ll text Clara and she’ll nag you.’
Ryan knew when to give in. So he duly dropped Truffle at Janie’s, showered and changed into his kilt.
When he came downstairs, Georgie was ready. ‘I’ll drive us, if you like.’
For a moment, he couldn’t answer because his tongue felt stuck to the roof of his mouth. Georgie looked amazing. Her hair was up, and she was wearing just enough mascara to make her green eyes look huge, and red lipstick that made her mouth look temptingly kissable. She was wearing heels, making her legs look as if they went on for ever; though her sleeveless red dress was very demure, with a skirt that came down to just below her knee and a rounded neckline that just skimmed her collarbones. And he was filled with the urge to take her into his arms and do one of those complicated dance moves that would spin her out and let her skirt swish round, then spin her back so she was in his arms again.
‘Ryan? Is everything all right?’
He gathered himself together. ‘It’s fine. No, I’ll drive and you can have a glass of wine or whatever,’ he said.
‘All right.’ She coughed. ‘You look very nice.’
He took a deep breath and hoped that his voice sounded normal when he said, ‘As do you.’ He gestured to the door. ‘Let’s go.’
* * *
‘Very nice’ didn’t even begin to describe how Ryan McGregor looked in a kilt.
Georgie had only ever seen men wearing kilts on TV or in the movies. She wasn’t prepared for just how good the outfit looked in real life. She had no idea what the black and grey tartan was—she planned to look it up surreptitiously online, rather than embarrass herself by asking him—but it suited him, particularly as it was teamed with a Prince Charlie jacket with ornate buttons, a waistcoat, a sporran, a wing-collar shirt and a black bow tie. His shoes were highly polished, his socks showed off very well-formed knees, and she went hot all over when she remembered all the suggestions about exactly what a Scot wore un
der his kilt.
Oh, help.
The last thing he needed was her behaving like a schoolgirl with a huge crush.
Even though she did have a huge crush on him.
More than a crush. She was more than halfway to falling in love with this dour, difficult man—a man who had a huge heart and had so much to give, but kept himself closed off.
He didn’t say much on the way into the city, and she walked beside him to the club where they were meeting the rest of the team, not having a clue where they were going.
Parminder and the others were waiting outside; and, as Parm had decreed, every single one of the men was wearing a kilt. Some were wearing a casual ghillie shirt, and others had chosen the more formal option of wing collar and Prince Charlie jacket, but not a single one could hold a candle to Ryan in the gorgeousness stakes.
‘I have to say I’m very impressed,’ she said with a smile. ‘Excellent organisation on your part, Parm, and what a handsome team we have. You all scrub up rather nicely.’
Alistair grinned at her and did a pirouette. ‘Some of us more so than others.’
‘You look very pretty in your skirt, Al,’ she teased.
‘Skirt,’ he huffed, laughing. ‘I’ll have you know that’s my clan tartan and an eight-yard kilt you’re talking about.’ He gave her a lascivious wink. ‘If you’re very good, I’ll tell you what I keep in my sporran.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ she retorted, laughing back because she knew Alistair was completely harmless and just teasing her.
‘Now we’re all here, let’s go in,’ Parminder said. ‘The first half of the night’s a proper ceilidh, and then it’s general dancing.’
The hall was wonderful; the overhead lights were turned down low and fairy lights draped the walls and the columns, making the place seem magical. A band was playing on a stage at one end, and there was a caller to organise everything.
Their team joined the dance floor for the next set of reels, and Georgie enjoyed herself hugely. Then, while the band had a break, the caller acted as a DJ and streamed music through the sound system.