The Good Father

by Maggie Kingsley

  ‘Mr Caldwell’s a lovely man—a really lovely man,’ Doris continued. ‘He was a widower for five years before he met Dr Hart, as she was then. Annie’s a nice girl but…’ Doris lowered her voice. ‘She has a child by another man, you know. A little boy.’

  ‘Mrs Turner, I really don’t think you should be telling—’

  ‘Poor Mr Caldwell,’ Doris sighed, as though Maddie hadn’t spoken. ‘As if the tragedy of his first wife’s death with ovarian cancer wasn’t bad enough, he and Dr Hart were only married for four months when she had a miscarriage. Of course, I did think at the time that she shouldn’t have carried on working while she was pregnant, and I know Mr Caldwell felt the same, but Dr Hart knew better, and now—almost a year on—she still hasn’t managed to conceive again.’

  So that was why Annie had become so upset in the neonatal unit. It must have brought it all back to her, the baby she had lost, the baby who could never have survived at such an early gestation. Tom Brooke should never have sent her down to the unit but, then, men never did think.

  ‘I understand Mr Dalgleish is a terrible tartar to work for,’ Doris continued.

  ‘He certainly likes his department to be run efficiently,’ Maddie said noncommittally, ‘but, then, most neonatologists do.’

  ‘I’ve heard it’s a lot worse than that,’ Doris said. ‘I’ve heard he rules his department with a rod of iron. Do this, do that, jump when he says jump.’

  ‘Then you heard wrong,’ Maddie snapped. ‘He’s a very well-liked head of department.’

  Doris gazed at her incredulously and Maddie couldn’t blame her. Nobody in NICU liked Gabriel, so why in the world was she lying about him? She scarcely knew the man, and what she knew she didn’t like, but all her instincts told her Doris Turner was trouble. The woman clearly fed on gossip, both from getting it and from passing it on, and she had no intention of providing her with any juicy titbits.

  She glanced down at her watch and started with fake amazement. ‘Good heavens, is that the time? I really must be getting back to the department—’

  ‘We secretaries all have an hour for lunch,’ Doris interrupted. ‘In fact, I was wondering if you’d like to come along to my office. I could make you a proper cup of coffee instead of the disgusting dishwater they serve here, and we could talk more privately.’

  ‘That’s most kind of you, but—’

  ‘I think it’s important that we secretaries stick together, don’t you?’

  Maddie stared into Doris’s speculative little eyes and knew that the last person in the Belfield she wanted to stick to was Doris. Desperately she looked round the canteen for an escape route, and suddenly saw one. It wasn’t an escape route she would normally have chosen but desperate situations called for desperate measures.

  ‘I’m so sorry, but I have to go.’

  ‘Go?’ Doris repeated. ‘But—’

  ‘My boss seems to want a word with me,’ Maddie said, getting to her feet, ‘so if you’ll excuse me…’

  ‘But—’

  She could still hear Doris protesting as she darted across the canteen to where Gabriel was sitting, but she didn’t care. Escaping from her was all that mattered and if she was jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire she’d worry about that later.

  ‘Mr Dalgleish, do you mind if I join you?’ she said breathlessly when she reached his table.

  He looked startled, and she wasn’t surprised. She would have been startled, too, if a panic-stricken woman had suddenly appeared without warning at her side.

  ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Talk to me,’ she said, sitting down quickly. ‘It doesn’t matter what you say just so long as you look as though whatever you’re saying, and whatever I’m saying, is of earth-shattering importance.’

  He gazed at her blankly for a second, then glanced across the canteen, and to her surprise a muscle quivered slightly in his cheek.

  ‘Ah. The dreaded Doris.’

  Maddie nodded with relief. ‘So, if you could just talk to me, and try to look intent on what I’m saying, she won’t try to join us.’

  ‘Look intent?’

  Good grief, did she need to spell it out for him?

  ‘Just stare at me, OK?’ she said. ‘Just talk to me and stare at me as though I’m giving you the code numbers for a secret Swiss safety-deposit box.’

  The muscle in his cheek quivered even more. ‘A secret Swiss safety-deposit box. OK, I think I can do that.’ He moved his empty lunch plate to one side, put his elbow on the table and leant his chin in his hand. ‘How’s this?’ he murmured, staring so deeply into her eyes that she gulped.

  Boy, but when he faked intent he really went for it. In fact, in this light, he looked a little like Susie’s latest pin-up. Except, of course, that the actor in question had brown hair and green eyes, and a sort of come-hither twinkle in his eyes, whereas Gabriel Dalgleish had black hair and grey eyes which didn’t twinkle at all, but…

  ‘I thought this was supposed to be a two-sided conversation,’ he muttered out of the corner of his mouth, and she blinked.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’m doing my best here in the intent and talking stakes, and you’re sitting there looking like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car. If you want to convince Doris that our conversation is really important and necessary, you’re going to have to look considerably more animated.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Animated.’ She flushed slightly. ‘Um…’ Pull yourself together, woman. ‘I’m sorry, but what were you talking about?’

  He rolled his eyes heavenwards. ‘You wouldn’t make a very good undercover agent.’

  ‘I’ve never needed to,’ she replied, stung. ‘But Doris—’

  ‘KGB-trained.’ He nodded as she tried to smother a laugh and failed. ‘Leastways, that’s what most of us reckon.’

  He had a sense of humour. Now, that was a surprise. It was also disconcerting, it was…

  Sexy?

  No, of course it wasn’t sexy. Gabriel Dalgleish was not sexy. Just because he was actually smiling at her, an oddly crooked and strangely appealing smile, and he’d rolled up his shirtsleeves to reveal a pair of muscular arms covered with a light down of dark hair, it didn’t mean he was sexy. He was stiff and starchy and probably performed sex exactly as he did everything else. Coolly, efficiently, mechanically, and yet…

  ‘You can relax now,’ he said. ‘Doris has just left. Not that you’ll be able to avoid her permanently, but at least you’ve postponed the evil hour today.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Thank you.’ She got to her feet awkwardly. ‘I’ll leave you in peace now.’

  ‘No, stay. Talk to me.’

  Talk to him? What did you talk to your boss about? The latest patient admissions, the crisis in the health service?

  ‘I—’

  ‘Annie was right—your name does suit you.’

  ‘You mean, I’m a sandwich short of a picnic,’ she said ruefully. ‘I know I must seem like that to you, running away from Doris, but—’

  ‘Not a sandwich short of a picnic, more…madcap.’

  ‘That’s an improvement?’ she protested, and he laughed.

  He actually laughed, and then she noticed something else. He looked exhausted. Sitting so close to him like this she could see that his eyes were bloodshot with fatigue, there was a very definite trace of five o’clock shadow on his jaw, and his normally immaculate black hair was rumpled and untidy.

  How many hours had he worked this week? According to his roster he was supposed to work a ten-hour day but Nell had been complaining only yesterday that he was hounding the night shift.

  ‘You work too hard,’ she said.

  ‘Jonah keeps telling me that.’

  ‘Jonah’s right.’

  ‘Jonah worries too much,’ he said dismissively.

  What else had Jonah said? ‘There’s no room for failure in his life.’

  Surely Gabriel wasn’t insecure enough to thi
nk his whole department would collapse unless he was there? No, of course, he wasn’t. He just arrogantly believed nobody could do the job as well as he could, and yet…

  ‘Let’s just say his family has a lot to answer for,’ Jonah had said.

  Had something happened to Gabriel in his youth, something that had scarred him, making him the man he was today? It would certainly explain a lot, and perhaps she should be feeling sorry for him rather than always angry with him. Perhaps she should…

  This is how you became involved with Andrew, her mind warned. First you felt sorry for him, then you made all kinds of allowances for him, and it was only after a lot of pain and heartache that you discovered there was nothing about Andrew to feel sorry for. He was just a rat fink.

  ‘Can I ask you something, Mr Dalgleish?’ she said as he reached for the carafe of water on the table next to them. ‘It’s nothing earth-shattering,’ she added, seeing his hand hesitate and his eyes grow wary. ‘It’s just…Call it curiosity—call it downright nosiness—but what makes you happy?’

  ‘I think you calling me Gabriel might be a start,’ he observed, and to her annoyance she felt her cheeks redden.

  What the heck was she blushing for? He was simply asking her to call him by his first name, as any boss might do.

  ‘OK, I’ll call you Gabriel if you’ll call me Maddie,’ she said. ‘And you haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘What makes me happy?’ He thought for a moment, then smiled. ‘Seeing a tiny preemie pull through against all the odds and eventually go home with his or her parents.’

  ‘I can understand that.’ She nodded. ‘What else?’

  ‘The neonatal unit,’ he said, his eyes no longer wary but enthusiastic. ‘When I was first appointed the staff weren’t motivated, the equipment was ancient, and we were constantly having to transfer babies down south because there was no way we could treat them properly. Now we can keep them here, give them the best care available.’

  ‘I can see how that would give you a sense of personal achievement,’ she said slowly, ‘but when I asked what made you happy I meant—well, I mean on a more personal level.’

  ‘But that is a personal level,’ he protested. ‘There’s nothing more important to me than my work.’

  ‘And a cow is a ruminating quadruped,’ she murmured, and he gazed at her blankly.

  ‘A cow is a what?’

  ‘It’s a quotation from Hard Times by Charles Dickens. A little boy who has been brought up never to think of fun or fantasy is asked to describe a cow and he says, “A cow is a ruminating quadruped.”’

  He frowned. ‘And your point is?’

  ‘That just as cows are more than simply creatures with four legs who eat grass, life should be more than just work. It should be fun and laughter and dreams and…’ She shook her head as he gazed at her, clearly bemused. ‘You’re right. There is no point, and I must go. My lunch hour is over and I have a stack of work to do.’

  He nodded, but when she reached the canteen door she stopped and gazed back at him. He was still sitting at his table, and the frown on his forehead had deepened. He was a strange man, such a strange man. All arrogance and efficiency on the surface, and yet underneath…

  A small chuckle broke from her. Unless she could go back in time and come back as a preemie, she was never going to find out what he was like underneath.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘YOU said he was the boss from hell,’ Nell protested as she sat in Maddie’s office, balancing a cup of coffee in one hand and a crispbread in the other. ‘You said he was arrogant, and overbearing, and—’

  ‘I’m not saying he isn’t,’ Maddie replied. ‘All I’m saying is maybe there’s a reason for him being the way he is. Maybe something happened in his past—’

  ‘Oh, God, this is going to be Andrew all over again, isn’ t it?’ Nell groaned. ‘Where’s your biscuit tin?’

  ‘It’s on the shelf behind you, but—’

  ‘Maddie, if you’re planning on getting involved with a man like Gabriel Dalgleish, I need carbs for my lunch, not crisp-bread.’

  ‘I am not planning on getting involved with Gabriel,’ Maddie said in exasperation as her cousin lifted the biscuit tin down from the shelf. ‘I’m only curious as to why he behaves the way he does, what might have made him the way he is.’

  ‘Sheer bloody-minded cussedness?’

  ‘Nell—’

  ‘Maddie, you have a genius for picking the wrong men. Look at Andrew,’ Nell continued as Maddie tried to interrupt. ‘You fell for him hook, line and sinker, propped him up, massaged his ego, and then, when you needed his support after Amy and John died, the jerk took off, saying he couldn’t cope with looking after somebody else’s kids.’

  ‘Andrew was different,’ Maddie said, feeling her cheeks turning pink. ‘I thought I was in love with him. I’m not in love with Gabriel Dalgleish.’

  ‘You thought you were in love with Colin, too,’ her cousin pointed out. ‘Colin of the tweed jackets who was all intense and scholarly and kept saying brains were more important than beauty—’

  ‘Nell, I was eighteen, a student nurse—’

  ‘Until he went off on that archaeological dig and came back married to a pneumatic bimbo with the brain size of a pea.’

  ‘OK, OK, you’ve made your point,’ Maddie said with a shaky laugh. ‘I have lousy taste in men, but Gabriel—’

  ‘This is all my fault, isn’t it?’ Nell said. ‘I asked you to loosen him up, to make him more human, but, Maddie, I didn’t mean you to do this, to get hurt again.’

  ‘Nell, I’m not going to get hurt because nothing is going to happen between Gabriel and me,’ Maddie said with exasperation. ‘We’re chalk and cheese, oil and water, chocolate cookies and the Atkins diet.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Nell said uncertainly, and Maddie laughed.

  ‘Nell, we’d kill each other within a week.’

  They would, too, Maddie thought, when her cousin had gone. She and Gabriel had nothing in common. OK, so people were always saying that opposites attract, but she wasn’t even attracted to him.

  You thought he was sexy yesterday in the canteen.

  Yes, but that had just been a momentary aberration, and she would never be foolish enough to act on it.

  You did with Colin and Andrew, her mind whispered. It was Colin’s green eyes and air of complete helplessness that first attracted you to him, and with Andrew you took one look at his thick blond hair and his apparent total inability to deal with everyday life and you were sunk.

  Maddie sighed as she opened the database on her computer. Even she could see there was a pattern here. Maybe she belonged to a group of women who had been invisibly marked with the word ‘Sucker’. Maybe women like her would be better off actively seeking out the biggest bastard they could find rather than deluding themselves into believing that the next man they met would be a prince. At least then the heartbreak wouldn’t come as any surprise.

  ‘Problem?’

  She looked up quickly to see Gabriel standing in her office doorway, and felt her cheeks darken.

  ‘Nothing you can help me with,’ she said brightly, and he came forward a step.

  ‘You may not believe it, but I’m actually quite a good listener.’

  He was right: she didn’t believe it. If she’d been a preemie with bronchopulmonary dysplasia and he could have put his stethoscope on her chest and listened to her breathing, she would have believed it, but listening to a fully grown twenty-nine-year-old adult? Nope, not a chance.

  ‘If you’re looking for the graph sheets on the incidence of jaundice in babies of twenty-eight to thirty-two weeks gestation, I’ll have them ready in about an hour,’ she said.

  ‘Actually, I’m here because the new girl on the switchboard transferred a call meant for you through to me by mistake. There’s a mechanic from McAllen’s garage down in Reception waiting to collect your car, but you haven’t left your keys.’

  ‘Oh, damn.’ She half r
ose to her feet. ‘I’ll take them down now.’

  ‘If you give them to me, I’ll get one of the porters to take them down for you.’ He glanced at her overflowing in-tray. ‘It looks as though you’ve got more than enough on your plate at the moment to have time to ferry car keys about.’

  And whose fault is that? she thought as she delved into her handbag and began hunting for her keys. If he would only stop sending her off on pointless errands she might actually be able to get on top of her work instead of constantly feeling as though she was running very fast simply to stand still.

  ‘You know, I read in an article somewhere that the contents of a woman’s handbag reveal her true personality,’ Gabriel observed, as she gave up on the delving and emptied the entire contents of her handbag onto her desk with a muttered oath of exasperation.

  ‘Sounds like an article written by somebody with too much time on their hands,’ she said. ‘Oh, damn it, where are they?’

  ‘Why in the world do you keep a screwdriver in your handbag?’ he asked in fascination. ‘I can understand the make-up, the spare tights, the hairbrush and the diary, but a screwdriver…’

  ‘At last!’ she exclaimed as her car keys surfaced. ‘In case I need to unscrew something, of course.’

  ‘To unscrew something,’ he repeated, taking the keys she was holding out to him. ‘Now, why didn’t I think of that?’

  He was laughing at her, she could hear it in his voice, and it was amazing how very different he looked when he laughed. Maybe it was because the laughter eradicated the arrogance which all too often marred his face. Maybe it had something to do with his oddly crooked smile, which made him seem strangely vulnerable, but whatever it was she couldn’t deny that when he laughed he definitely looked younger, more human and decidedly—in fact, quite disturbingly—attractive.

  Red alert, Maddie, red alert. You’ve started to feel sorry for him and you’re finding him attractive. All you need is to start propping him up and you’re in big trouble.

  Swiftly she gathered up the contents of her handbag and stuffed them back in. ‘I really must get back to work. As you said, I have masses to do. There’s the graph sheets you need, and I have letters to do, forms to fill in…’