The Good Father

by Maggie Kingsley

  ‘Of course, if tomorrow’s not convenient…’ Gabriel continued, clearly sensing her dismay, and she bit her lip.

  ‘I didn’t mean—I didn’t say…What time do you want to come?’

  ‘Would ten-thirty be OK?’

  Ten-thirty tomorrow. It could have been worse. Gabriel could have wanted to come round that night.

  ‘Right.’ She nodded. ‘Fine,’ she added, fully expecting him to go back into his consulting room, but he didn’t.

  He stayed where he was, almost as though he wanted to say something else but didn’t know how, which was crazy because he normally had far too much to say.

  ‘Is there something else?’ she said, only to immediately wish she hadn’t, because he moved a step closer, and being closer to him was not a good idea.

  Being closer meant noticing all the things about him she was trying to ignore. Like how broad his shoulders were, how thick his black hair was, what a beautiful mouth he had, and…

  She sucked in her breath as his eyes caught hers. Oh, hell, he had that look in his eyes again, that dark, hot look. That look that made her heart kick up into her throat. But this time it was worse. This time she could feel a wave of heat rolling over her. A heat that made her long to reach out and touch him, to bring him closer to her, and he was everything she should avoid. He was Andrew and Colin all over again, and she’d done that script, and to go down that road again to certain heartbreak…

  She backed up a step, unconsciously shaking her head. ‘Gabriel, I don’t…I can’t…’

  ‘Maddie, what’s wrong?’ he said. ‘You’re…Dear Lord, you’re not afraid of me, are you?’

  There was horror in his face, and she backed up another step. ‘No, of course I’m not, but…’

  ‘There you are, Maddie.’

  Oh, somebody shoot me now, she thought as she glanced over her shoulder to see Jonah striding towards them. She’d managed to get through the whole morning without meeting him and now he was here, and Gabriel was here, and all she needed was for Nell to come out of the unit and her misery would be complete.

  ‘I’m really busy, Jonah,’ she said, hoping to head him off, but it didn’t work.

  ‘We need to talk, Maddie.’

  No, they didn’t, she thought. It would be much better all round if they both just tried to pretend that last night had never happened, but Jonah looked like a man with a mission, a man who wouldn’t be deflected.

  ‘My office,’ she said, and to her relief Jonah followed her. But he didn’t even give her a chance to marshal her thoughts. The minute she closed her office door he was off and running.

  ‘Maddie, I know there’s always a certain awkwardness on occasions like this, so I just want to say that I had a very pleasant time last night and I, for one, would be more than happy to do it again.’

  ‘You…you would?’ she stammered, her eyes flying to his. ‘But—’

  ‘As a friend, Maddie. If you’re feeling low, and want to get out of the house for the evening, I’m your man. If you want some furniture moved, give me a call. If you need somebody beaten up, just say the word and I’ll batter seven bells out of them. I mean it,’ he continued as she began to laugh. ‘Think of me as your helpful Aunt Elsie but without the dress and the handbag.’ He frowned slightly. ‘Although if it’s for the beating up, maybe you should think of me as your helpful Uncle George.’

  He meant it. She could tell from the concern in his gentle brown eyes that he meant it. If she had any sense she’d grab hold of this man, and never let go. He was kind and honest, and he would never hurt her, but it wasn’t enough, she knew it wasn’t.

  ‘Jonah, you’re a man in a million,’ she said.

  ‘But not the man in a million for you,’ he replied, and she shook her head sadly.

  ‘I wish you were, Jonah. I do honestly wish you were.’

  ‘So do I,’ he said, ‘but we can’t always get what we want in life, can we?’

  Tell me about it, she thought.

  ‘Now, I don’t know about you,’ he continued briskly, ‘but I’m starving. How about joining me for lunch in the canteen?’

  He couldn’t be serious. ‘Jonah, if we have lunch together in the canteen everyone will think…they’ll think…’

  ‘That we’re an item.’ He nodded, his eyes gleaming. ‘So how about we confuse them a little?’

  For a moment she hesitated, but what harm would it do? Plus she had a horrible suspicion that if she hung about debating the matter Jonah would probably ask Gabriel or Nell to join them for lunch, which would send her headache into full migraine mode.

  ‘OK, you’re on,’ she said, and he grinned.

  ‘I like a girl with spirit.’

  It’s not spirit I have, she thought. It’s a healthy sense of self-preservation.

  ‘Good grief, but it’s busy in here today,’ Maddie said as she and Jonah ate their lunch in the canteen and watched the queue at the counter getting longer and longer.

  ‘What we really need is a new state-of-the-art infirmary,’ Jonah replied. ‘The Belfield was never designed to accommodate the number of staff it has now.’

  He was right, but Maddie couldn’t deny she preferred the homeliness of the Belfield’s Victorian dilapidation, even if lunch hours could sometimes be fraught.

  ‘So, you’re hopeful Kieran Thompson might be able to go home in a couple of weeks?’ she said. ‘That should please his parents.’

  Jonah nodded. ‘He’s doing really well. It’s a pity we can’t say the same about his twin.’

  ‘Nell’s not happy about him,’ Maddie observed. ‘She still feels something’s being overlooked, but she doesn’t know what.’

  ‘I’d back Nell’s gut instincts any day,’ Jonah murmured. ‘She has a built-in sixth sense when it comes to preemies.’

  ‘She was the same at the Hillhead,’ Maddie began, only to realise Jonah wasn’t listening to her but frowning at something in the queue. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I never thought I’d see those two together again,’ he murmured.

  ‘What two?’ she asked, swivelling round in her seat.

  ‘Gabriel and Evelyn Harper. They were an item last year until they parted somewhat acrimoniously.’

  Maddie pushed her empty lunch plate to one side and took a sip of her coffee. Don’t ask. It’s none of your business…Oh, what the hell. You want to know, you know you do.

  ‘In what way acrimoniously?’ she asked.

  ‘She wanted to get married, he didn’t.’

  She obviously still did, Maddie thought as she watched Evelyn beam up at Gabriel, her long blonde hair glinting in the afternoon sunshine, her white coat clinging to her perfect figure.

  ‘She’s very pretty,’ she said grudgingly. Actually, she was gorgeous.

  ‘Smart, too,’ Jonah said. ‘The youngest orthopaedic surgeon in Scotland.’

  She would be. No, that wasn’t fair. Evelyn Harper was probably very nice, even if she was practically climbing inside Gabriel’s shirt.

  ‘So, Gabriel’s the love-them-and-leave-them type, is he?’ she said, trying and failing to keep the waspishness out of her voice.

  ‘Nah, he just dates the wrong women.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, right,’ Maddie declared. ‘The poor man just wants to have sex with no strings attached and all these unreasonable women keep expecting him to marry them.’

  Jonah let out a snort of laughter which he quickly converted into a cough. ‘No, he honestly does date the wrong women. He has an unhappy knack of attracting the over-achievers—women like himself who need to be the best at everything—which, of course, is a recipe for disaster.’

  And pretty well rules me out, Maddie thought, because he’s always telling me I’m wasting my ability, my talents.

  Yes, but, then, why is giving you those hot looks? her mind demanded. And they are hot looks. Hell, those looks could blister paint.

  ‘What Gabriel needs is somebody to show him there’s life outside the hospital,’ Jonah conti
nued. ‘Somebody who will encourage him to smell the roses.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say he looks as though he’s missing any roses at the moment,’ Maddie said tightly as Gabriel laughed at something Evelyn had said. ‘In fact, I’d say he looks like a man who wouldn’t much care if the entire world was paved over.’

  Jonah sat back in his seat and gazed at her thoughtfully. ‘You think about him a lot, don’t you?’

  ‘Only because we all suffer if he’s in a bad mood,’ she floundered, annoyingly aware that her cheeks were heating up, ‘so it’s best to be prepared—forewarned.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Jonah said with a look that told her he didn’t believe her. ‘Maddie—Oh, damn,’ he continued as his pager began to bleep. ‘No, finish your coffee,’ he added, seeing her half rise to her feet. ‘There’s no sense in us both missing out.’

  She wasn’t missing anything, she decided when Jonah had gone. One sip of her coffee had been enough to tell her it was as revolting as usual, and even if it had been the finest cappuccino in the world, the last thing she wanted was to sit here drinking it while simultaneously trying not to notice that Gabriel was chatting up an old girlfriend. And he was chatting her up. Evelyn was hanging on his every word.

  Probably because he’s hitting her with one of his hot looks. She sighed, feeling her heart dip. The looks she’d stupidly thought he reserved for her. Well, maybe this was what she needed, a wake-up call, a reality check. Hot looks might set her pulses racing, but what she needed was stability, commitment, and commitment wasn’t something a man like Gabriel would be offering to a woman like her with two children.

  Well, she might be a closet masochist but even she didn’t want to sit here and watch proof positive of her own stupidity. She’d go back to the unit, cadge a coffee from Lynne and see if there were any chocolates left from the box one of the mothers had brought in earlier in the week as a thank-you gift.

  ‘Nothing beats chocolate if you’re angry or unhappy,’ Nell was fond of saying.

  ‘Too damn right,’ Maddie muttered as she left the canteen, and if she hadn’t worked out yet whether she was angry or unhappy it didn’t matter.

  All that mattered was she had to start growing up. She was twenty-nine, for heaven’s sake, and she should have realised years ago that frogs never turned into princes. It was time for her to grow up, and she was starting right now.

  Gabriel swore under his breath as he scanned the canteen. One minute Maddie had been laughing and joking with Jonah, then a crowd from Haematology had obscured his view, and when he’d looked for her again she was gone.

  ‘I’m sorry, Evelyn, but I have to go,’ he said, cutting her off in mid-flow. ‘I’ve just seen somebody I need to speak to.’

  Evelyn said something in reply but he didn’t stop to find out what. All he was interested in was in finding out what he’d said, or done, that had caused Maddie to back away from him in the corridor earlier, looking for all the world as though she was afraid of him.

  Hell, he knew he had a sharp tongue and a brusque manner, but never would he have wanted anybody to be afraid of him, and especially not Maddie. He needed to talk to her, to find out what was wrong, but when he went out into the corridor his heart sank when he saw her standing by the lifts, surrounded by at least a dozen members of staff.

  Sod’s law, he decided when a lift arrived and everybody squashed in.

  Definitely Sod’s law, he thought as a chorus of voices shouted out, ‘Fifth floor, please.’

  If there had been any fairness in the world they would all have been getting off at the second floor but, no, they were all, bar a couple of nurses, going to the fifth. Well, he might be stuck in a lift with an audience of a dozen members of staff, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t talk to her, he decided, forcing his way to the back of the lift where she was standing sandwiched between the wall and a portly porter.

  ‘We should have taken the stairs,’ he said, smiling down at her.

  ‘Yes.’

  Just ‘Yes’. Nothing more, and she didn’t even look up at him, but kept her eyes fixed on the safety poster on the wall beside her.

  OK, he thought. Work. He’d talk about work, and see if that got her attention.

  ‘Have we received any emails from a Duncan Lindsay this morning?’ he said. ‘I met him at a conference last month and he expressed an interest in publishing an article I’ve written on retinopathy in premature babies.’

  ‘You have an email from Elliot Mackay of the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, one from the BMA, but nothing from a Duncan Lindsay.’

  ‘I hope he’s not going to leave it until the last minute to say yes or no,’ he said as the lift lurched to a halt at the second floor and the two nurses got out. ‘It’s quite a lengthy article and I’ll need you to type it out before I send it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sometimes I think these editors don’t realise we have “proper” jobs,’ he continued determinedly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘In fact, they probably think we have nothing better to do than sit about all day waiting for them to ring or email.’

  ‘Probably.’

  Oh, give it up, Gabriel, he told himself as he stared down at her and realised she hadn’t once turned her head in his direction. She’s not interested in you—she’s never going to be interested in you.

  Evelyn was. Evelyn had made it abundantly clear that she’d be more than willing to resume their relationship, but he didn’t want to resume the relationship. He wanted the girl standing next to him. The girl with the white face and strained eyes who was now staring fixedly at the lift buttons as though willing them to change faster.

  ‘Maddie—’

  ‘I’ll see if anything has come in for you from Duncan Lindsay during lunch,’ she said over him as the lift doors opened on the fourth floor and she pushed her way out.

  ‘There’s no hurry,’ he called after her, but she was already hurrying away and he clenched his teeth with exasperation as he followed her.

  She would never have dashed off like that if Jonah had been in the lift with her but, then, with umpteen nieces and nephews Jonah knew exactly what to say to kids. Damn and blast him.

  ‘Gabriel, can I have a word?’

  Only if you’re going to tell me you and Maddie had a really lousy time last night and you’re not going out with her again, Gabriel thought as he saw Jonah walking towards him, a broad smile lighting up his face.

  ‘I’m a bit busy, Jonah—’

  ‘It’s about Ben Thompson.’

  ‘What about Ben?’ Gabriel demanded, all thoughts of Maddie vanishing instantly from his mind.

  ‘I had an emergency call during lunch because he’d stopped breathing, and while Nell was waiting for me to arrive she realised his ventilator tube was blocked so she took it out, inserted a new tube and administered heart massage.’

  ‘Is he all right?’ Gabriel said, beginning to head towards the unit. ‘The longer he wasn’t breathing—’

  ‘Gabriel, he was back to normal within minutes, and his blood-oxygen saturation improved even when his oxygen was reduced from 100 per cent to 40 per cent. The tube was blocked with five centimetres of debris and fluid from his lungs and my guess is it’s been gradually building up over time.’

  ‘So Sister Sutherland was right,’ Gabriel said slowly. ‘We were missing something.’

  Jonah nodded. ‘Smart girl, Nell. In fact, if you weren’t so set on Maddie taking over as Ward Manager, I’d recommend Nell to take Lynne’s place.’

  ‘I’m surprised you’re not pushing for Maddie in the circumstances,’ Gabriel said, more caustically than he’d intended, and Jonah looked puzzled.

  ‘What circumstances?’

  ‘Well, you and she…’ Gabriel’s jaw tightened. ‘You’re dating, aren’t you?’

  A flash of anger darkened Jonah’s face. ‘Maddie and I are not dating, and even if we were, I would never allow my private feelings to get in the way of my professional judgment, and I take grea
t exception to you suggesting it.’

  ‘You’re not dating?’ Gabriel repeated. ‘But you went out together last night, didn’t you?’

  The anger on Jonah’s face faded, to be slowly replaced by a look of dawning comprehension. ‘Maddie and I went out to dinner as friends. End of story.’

  ‘I see,’ Gabriel said slowly, and Jonah nodded.

  ‘I think I do, too. And now I have a ward round to do, so if you’ll excuse me…’

  Gabriel muttered something in reply, but what he really wanted was to punch the air in relief. He had a chance now. OK, so it wasn’ t a very good one, and the possibilities of him screwing up again were limitless, but he had a chance, and he was going to grab it with both hands.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘SO…YOU accept my apology?’ Nell said, her face anxious, her eyes uncertain. ‘For what I said to you on Thursday evening about Jonah?’

  ‘Of course I do, you idiot,’ Maddie replied as she took the last of the washing out of the washing machine and began loading it into the tumbledrier. ‘We both said things we shouldn’t have, and you’re right about Jonah. He is nice. He’s just not for me—not in a romantic sense.’

  ‘I know.’ Nell glanced up at the kitchen clock, and sighed. ‘I’d better get going but I wish I could stay here with you—give you some moral support when Gabriel arrives—instead of going into work.’

  It’s not moral support I need, Maddie thought. It’s to grow up. To stop being a walking doormat for men with hang-ups to wipe their feet on before they dump me.

  ‘What did Charlie say when you told him Gabriel was coming?’ Nell continued, and Maddie hit the tumbledrier’s ‘on’ button with more force than was necessary.

  ‘Nothing. He just shrugged.’

  ‘It could have been worse,’ Nell observed, watching her. ‘He could have flat-out refused to meet him.’

  ‘I know.’

  Nell stared at her for a moment, then shook her head. ‘OK, what’s up? I know you have the boss from hell arriving in half an hour and Lord knows that’s enough to put a damper on any woman’s Saturday morning, but there’s something else—something you’re not telling me. So give.’