‘Ella?’ he exclaimed, clearly shocked. ‘Ella Buchan? What are you doing here?’
‘What am I doing here?’ she repeated. ‘I live here, Seth. This is the Buchan’s Croft—’ she stressed the correct pronunciation ‘—and since Sophia married in March, I am the last remaining Buchan.’
Ella stepped back into the cottage, opening the door wider to invite him into the warmth. There was no point in leaving him standing on the doorstep any longer, not now that she knew her wretched sister had deliberately sent Seth up to see her.
She should have expected Sophia to find some means of having her own way. All their lives she had been pulling rank as the older sister and the fact that she was now a married woman didn’t seem to have made any difference—probably made things worse, in fact.
‘But…How long have you been living here? No one seemed to know where you’d gone. Where are you working now?’ The questions were tumbling out of him without giving her a chance to reply, but at least they were telling her that Sophia hadn’t primed him before he’d come up here.
If she’d thought about it logically, she’d have realised that her sister was far too Machiavellian to have done that. All she’d needed to do had been to set the scene by sending Seth up to see her. That would guarantee that little sister Ella had to ‘sort her life out’ just as Sophia had been advising her for months.
Seth was standing there with his coat and scarf still on but apparently totally unaware of his surroundings, his eyes riveted to her face almost as if he was expecting her to disappear at any moment.
A sudden sharp ring took Ella by surprise. For a moment she couldn’t think what it was, then remembered the bread dough waiting to be cooked.
‘Excuse me but I’ve got to see to that,’ she said as she hastily turned towards the fireplace. If she was lucky she could get her brain to work in the few moments the task would take.
‘In that case, I’ll bring those boxes in from the porch before they get buried under the snow,’ he said after an interminable pause.
For a moment she’d thought he was going to insist on some immediate answers but the alternative was almost worse. The fact that he was even now carrying his belongings inside was bringing home to her the fact that, thanks to her sister’s scheming, the one man she’d never wanted to see again was actually here, in her house. And, thanks to the dreadful weather, he was going to have to stay here at least until tomorrow morning.
She hurriedly bent to her task, raking the glowing embers out of the cloam oven before she slid the pans of perfectly risen dough into position and shut the door.
Automatically, she reached for the timer and set it again, wondering as she heard it begin to tick the minutes away how different her life was going to be by the time it rang again.
She wrapped her arms around herself as the front door opened again, tucking her hands up inside the ends of the baggy sleeves as the wind whistled across the room and straight up the chimney.
‘Where do you want me to put these?’ He gestured with a nod of his head towards the box he was carrying. ‘It seems to be tins and packets. Staple items.’
‘Through here.’ She turned to open the door on the other side of the fireplace, nervousness setting her chattering. ‘Granny always called it the scullery. The butler sink is still here but the old wash copper’s been replaced with a machine—not that Granny saw the need for using it when she was only washing for one, but Dad insisted she wasn’t to do the sheets and towels by hand any more.’
She had to stop when she ran out of breath and gestured silently for him to put the box on the battle-scarred wooden table against one wall.
Equally silently he obeyed, then paused to look around, his eyes taking in everything from the beamed ceiling that scarcely cleared his head to the handcrafted cupboards along one wall and the flag-stoned floor.
Ella found she was almost holding her breath while she waited for his reaction to his simple surroundings. It was certainly very different from anything a topflight obstetrics and gynaecology consultant would choose to live in.
Then he smiled. It was little more than a brief curving of a mouth that never smiled enough but it sent a shaft of warmth straight to her vulnerable heart.
‘It’s amazing,’ he said softly, his eyes going back to her as she hovered anxiously in the doorway. ‘Apart from the fridge and washing machine lurking in that corner you could almost imagine you’d stepped back in time. Is the whole croft the same?’
‘More or less…apart from the sinful luxury of the tiniest bathroom in the Western world.’
‘Thank God for that,’ he exclaimed fervently. ‘I suddenly wondered if there was still a…what were they called? At the bottom of the garden.’
‘A privy? There is,’ she informed him with a straight face, only breaking into a smile when she saw his look of horror. ‘No longer in use, though,’ she added, wickedly long seconds later.
The flash of humour in his eyes promised retribution but when he approached her it was only to make his way towards the remaining pile of bags and boxes.
He paused in mid-stride and whirled to face her, almost cannoning into her as she followed him across the room.
‘Dammit, Ella, this isn’t going to work,’ he exclaimed, taking a hasty step out of her way as he raked a long-fingered hand through his hair. ‘I came up here expecting to spend the next two weeks in an isolated little cottage of some sort. I certainly didn’t expect to find you here and I want to know what’s going on.’
‘Going on?’ It had sounded almost like an accusation but what was she guilty of?
‘Well, obviously you got your sister to set me up, so what I want to know is what you’re hoping to get out of it? If it’s just another one-night stand you wanted, we certainly didn’t have to come all this way for it. If you’d let me know you were interested, perhaps we could have arranged for a two-week stay in a comfortable hotel somewhere.’
‘Seth!’ The unexpectedness of his attack had left her almost speechless, apart from the fact that it was totally unfair. She wasn’t the one who had—
‘Of course! Stupid me! You don’t go in for anything as long as two weeks. Just the one night after your sister’s wedding and then, when I came back, you’d disappeared off the face of the earth.’ He was so angry that his eyes were almost shooting sparks at her but that didn’t stop her from retaliating with all the fire of her redhead’s nature.
‘I wasn’t the one who disappeared after one night, or have you got a more convenient memory than I have?’ She gave a mirthless laugh as the memories of that fateful day began to scroll their disjointed way through her head. She’d been trying to block them out for month after miserable month and still hadn’t managed it.
‘In case you really have forgotten what happened, let me remind you of the salient facts,’ she snapped fiercely, holding one hand up to count them off, finger by finger.
‘One—we danced at my sister’s wedding. Two—we ended up in bed together. Three—you had disappeared by the time I woke up the next morning. Four—by the time I went back on duty it was announced that you had gone on some sort of hastily organised leave with no date given for your return. Now,’ she continued when she’d drawn in a hasty breath and planted her fists combatively on her hips, ‘correct me if I’ve missed anything out, but I’m almost certain that nowhere in that series of events was there any mention on your part that you’d even enjoyed the encounter in the first place, let alone that you were interested in repeating it.’
His lips had been pressed into a thin line and his hands had been balled into tight fists when she’d started, but by the time she finished his arms were hanging limp at his sides, his eyes riveted on the front of her baggy jumper.
She glanced down to see that she’d planted her hands on her hips as she’d harangued him, and the gesture had drawn her clothing against the burgeoning evidence of her heavily pregnant state.
‘My God! Ella, you’re pregnant!’ he breathed, clearly sh
ocked.
‘Well, I’m glad to see that all those years of training weren’t wasted,’ she retorted acidly, just as the timer rang again.
It didn’t take more than a minute to turn the loaves round to ensure they baked evenly, but it was long enough for her to regret her rudeness.
There had been two of them in that hotel room that night and that meant it had been just as much her fault as his that they hadn’t taken any steps to prevent her getting pregnant.
She straightened up from her task, knowing that she had to apologise, but before she could speak he beat her to it.
‘So, who’s the father? I hadn’t heard you’d got married but, then, once you left the hospital you were outside the scope of the gossip grapevine.’ He stopped suddenly, as though struck by a sudden thought. ‘Is this place big enough to have guests to stay? Won’t your husband have something to say about your sister dumping an old colleague of yours on him?’
For a moment Ella didn’t know whether she was going to laugh or cry but ended up determined to do neither.
‘You stupid man!’ she exclaimed shrilly as all those months of wondering and hurting finally boiled over. ‘I’m not married. I have never been married and I have no intention of ever getting married. Furthermore, whether you believe it or not, you are the only man I’ve ever slept with, but to save you wasting your money on DNA testing I’ll tell you here and now that I won’t be asking you for a single penny to raise this child. At least you’ll go away from here secure in the knowledge that I have no intention of using the baby to destroy your marriage.’
The last words were still quivering in the bread-scented room when reaction began to set in.
This was not how she’d dreamed of telling Seth that he was going to be a father.
In her dreams his marriage didn’t exist and he’d come to her telling her that he’d missed her dreadfully and couldn’t bear to live without her.
In her dreams he’d told her that he loved her and the baby they’d made that magical night, and would take care of them for ever.
In her dreams he came to her and wrapped her in loving arms while he kissed her. He didn’t stand on the other side of the room like a statue carved out of granite with his eyes burning into her like hot coals.
For a moment she just stood there with her hands resting protectively over the prominent bulge of her pregnancy, wondering why everything had gone so wrong. When she’d first met him she’d thought he was something so special. How could she have been so mistaken?
They had been working together for several months before the fateful day of her sister’s wedding, time in which she’d believed they’d been getting to know each other. Only she hadn’t known him at all. Hadn’t known that he’d been hiding such a monstrous secret until it had been far too late to stop herself falling in love with him.
She was still glaring at him after her outburst, but the longer she looked the more she began to notice about his appearance.
He’d changed since she’d seen him last. There was a sprinkling of grey at his temples that hadn’t been there before and he looked thinner, almost as if he’d been ill.
There was a subtle difference in the expression in his eyes, too. A year ago their polished steel had had the intensity of lasers where now they seemed almost…almost defeated.
He doesn’t look happy, she thought with a strange ache around her heart.
Startled by the burgeoning emotion she’d vowed to dismiss for ever, she suddenly realised that in spite of everything she was as much in love with him as she’d ever been.
Then to her utter mortification she burst into tears.
CHAPTER TWO
FROM the first moment she saw him, Ella felt as though a light had been switched on inside her.
‘Seth Gifford,’ she whispered as she walked away after their first introduction, loving the feel of the words in her mouth.
Somehow she just knew that she had met the man who was going to be the most important part of her life, and she was filled with an almost giddy excitement.
It wasn’t enough that she’d just landed the job of her dreams. After waiting twenty-seven years and nearly giving up hope, she’d met the man of her dreams, too. What was more, she was almost certain she’d seen an answering spark of attraction in his eyes that had nothing to do with the fact that she was a well-qualified midwife.
‘Is there anything else you want to see?’ her guide asked as they continued on their way along the light and airy corridor towards the delivery suites.
A swift sideways glance at her new colleague reassured her that Carol didn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss in her reaction to their obs and gyn consultant and she breathed a sigh of relief. That was not the way she wanted to start to build up a relationship in the department.
‘I’ll probably have dozens of questions,’ she answered with a laugh. ‘But you’ve told me so much in the last half-hour that I can’t tell what’s stuck yet.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Carol commiserated. ‘Every obs and gyn department does the same basic job but there are always differences in their routines when you move to another hospital.’ She paused to throw Ella a speculative look. ‘What do you think so far? Are you going to like us enough to stay?’
I’d stay just for the pleasure of seeing Seth Gifford every day, she heard a little voice say inside her head, and swiftly squashed it. ‘This is pretty much my ideal job,’ she admitted candidly, not seeing the point of beating around the bush. ‘I’ve always wanted to work somewhere that was at the forefront of all aspects of human fertility, and to come here, where there are so many inter-departmental links, is perfect.’
The understanding smile on Carol’s face encouraged her to continue enthusiastically.
‘I’ll be learning, too, because I’ll be able to see everything from perfectly straightforward deliveries of naturally achieved pregnancies to those that would never have happened without medical assistance. And then there’s the staff. I only met some of them when I came for my interview, but everyone’s been very welcoming, right up to the top man.’
‘Top man?’ Carol questioned. ‘Oh, you mean Mr Gifford. He’s not exactly the top man because we share Professor den Haag with St Augustine’s, and Mr Crossman, our other consultant, has about ten years’ seniority, but he is all our own.’
Ella suddenly found herself longing to ask Carol for details about Seth and that shook her. She’d never allowed anyone or anything to interfere with her job before, and she wasn’t going to let her hormones get in the way now. It might be the first time they’d really sat up and taken notice of anyone, but that was her own problem.
‘So, what is the atmosphere like in the department? Does everyone get on well?’ she asked as her guide finally took her into the comfortable atmosphere of the staff lounge to make them a coffee. Carol had warned, laughingly, that sitting down would probably be the signal for dozens of patients to turn up in complicated labour, but they’d deemed it worth the risk. Midwifery was definitely one of the less predictable specialties and they all learned early on in their training to grab the chance of a break with both hands.
‘Actually, we do all get on reasonably well,’ Carol confirmed thoughtfully. ‘You’ll always get those who don’t pull their weight quite as willingly as others but here they seem to be balanced by others who always do their share and more.’
‘Doesn’t that lead to friction?’
‘Oh, there’s the occasional flare-up to make the slackers pull their socks up, but it’s generally fairly good-natured.’
‘What about the bigwigs? What are they like to work with?’ She hadn’t been able to resist asking after all.
‘Professor den Haag is wonderful. He’s a big blond gorgeous teddy bear of a man who loves his work every bit as much as he loves his wife and family. They’ve got six children already. Three sets of twins!’
Ella blinked. She couldn’t imagine how any woman coped with one set, let alone three.
‘Wow! Gluttons for punishment!’ she exclaimed. ‘What about Mr Crossman? I met him briefly at my interview but he was called into theatre for an emergency Caesarean almost as soon as we shook hands.’
‘He’s a quiet man, not much older than the professor but seems much more middle-aged somehow. Steady and hardworking but doesn’t seem to have much rapport with his patients—the adult ones, that is. He adores babies, though. He’s just become a grandfather for the first time so he’ll probably trap you in a corner with the latest photos when he finds he’s got a new victim to show them to.’
‘I’ve been warned!’ Ella chuckled. ‘And what about Mr Gifford?’ Finally, she’d asked about the one person she really wanted to know about.
‘Well, what can I tell you?’ Carol said with a shrug and a roll of her eyes. ‘Obviously, he’s totally gorgeous. The archetypal tall, dark and handsome with those lovely velvety grey eyes, added to which he’s brilliant at his job and excellent with all his patients. But other than that, there isn’t much to tell. He hasn’t been here very long—probably nearly six months now. He seems to keep himself very much to himself outside his duty hours and that’s as much as we know so far.’
‘That’s quite amazing, knowing what hospital grapevines are like,’ Ella commented, unaccountably disappointed not to have learned anything of a more personal nature about the man who had jump-started her female hormones at last. ‘Usually everyone knows everything, including his inside leg length, within the first twenty-four hours of a good-looking man joining the staff.’
Carol was still laughing as she got up to answer the phone but her smile had faded by the time the call ended.
‘Damn!’ she muttered with a scowl and tipped the rest of her coffee down the sink.
‘Problem?’ Ella was already on her feet and giving her pale blue tunic top a tug to straighten the hem over her hips.
‘One of our assisted pregnancies has started bleeding. Her husband’s bringing her in now.’
Mistletoe Mother (Medical Romance) Page 2