Celia wouldn’t condemn her when she knew, but whether she would support her against her father Imogen wasn’t sure, and the thought of how he would react made her break out in a sweat every time she considered it. Unlike Blair, she had no siblings to turn to either, so she was preparing for it to be ‘go it alone’ time when the baby arrived.
As the practice nurse checked blood pressures and urine samples, Imogen examined the patients one by one. Obviously they were all at different stages of pregnancy. Some, like herself, were in the early stages. Others were further on, and a couple of mothers-to-be were about to give birth in the very near future.
In the case of one of them, her blood pressure had soared since the previous week and Imogen had no choice but to tell her that she would have to be admitted to hospital immediately. It was a first, much-longed-for baby for a couple in their early forties, and she wasn’t taking any chances.
The woman’s colour drained from her face when she was told that the receptionist was going to phone for an ambulance to come directly to the surgery.
‘Is it that serious?’ she asked anxiously.
Imogen’s smile flashed out.
‘Not if we get you into bed rest under hospital supervision immediately,’ she told her. ‘You’ve three weeks to go and will probably be kept in until the birth.’
She picked up the phone and handed it to her.
‘You can call your husband from here and ask him to meet you at the hospital with whatever you might need in clothes and toiletries.’
‘Have you got any children, Doctor?’ the woman asked as they waited for the ambulance to arrive.
‘No, not as yet,’ Imogen told her, and with the thought of Blair within earshot refrained from adding, But I soon will have.
As she dressed for the dinner date with Blair, Imogen was wishing that he’d asked her out for a different reason. Not because he felt bound to do the honours for a satisfactory member of staff, but because he desired her company in the way of a man who saw a woman that he wanted to be with.
She was strongly attracted to him and wished she wasn’t. To fall in love with Blair Nesbitt would only complicate her life further. If he returned her feelings it would be fantastic, but it went without saying that he would have second thoughts when he found out she was pregnant from a previous relationship. It would be certain to put the blight on any chemistry between them.
At the back of her mind there was always the thought that if Sean hadn’t gone cavorting off to the Himalayas, none of it would be happening. She would still be working in Birmingham, though whether he would still have been on the scene she didn’t know.
Deep down inside her there was a feeling that maybe the fates hadn’t been too unkind. If things hadn’t happened the way they had, she would never have met Blair, and as she paused in front of the mirror for a final glance before going to let him into the apartment, she knew that whatever the future held she wouldn’t have wanted to miss that.
‘Whew!’ Blair said when he saw her. ‘Can this be the restrained dresser who occupies the consulting room next to mine? If Simon manages to escape from the kitchen while we’re at the Belvedere, he really will be on the scent.’
‘I haven’t dressed for Simon,’ she told him meaningfully. ‘I’m only interested in your approval.’
‘You have it,’ he said as the warmth in his eyes deepened.
‘Let’s go, then,’ she suggested, satisfied that if she hadn’t made an impression on him previously, she had tonight.
The sleeveless dress of pale turquoise silk with matching three-quarter-length jacket made her smooth skin glow and the dark lustre of her hair stand out against its shimmering lines. Now that the sickness had passed, her face had filled out and tonight there was a radiance about her that Blair hadn’t seen before. He wasn’t to know that it was a case of one last fling for Imogen before her big confession.
‘Ooh! This is nice,’ Imogen said as a waiter showed them to a table in the Belvedere restaurant which was fast becoming one of the city’s most exclusive eating places. ‘What exactly does Simon do here?’
‘He’s a chef. He went to catering college and after working in kitchens lower down the scale has landed himself a job here. He’s good. Always had a natural talent for cooking. He’s usually kept busy behind the scenes but what’s the bet he has a quick peep to see who I’m with?’
‘So he doesn’t know it’s me. He mentioned someone else that he thought you might be dining with, didn’t he?’
Blair smiled.
‘Yes. I sometimes take the widow of a friend of mine out for a meal. Simon doesn’t approve. I think that he sees himself having nowhere to live if I were to marry Briony Matthews.’
‘And is that likely?’ she asked as her palms became moist and her throat went dry.
‘What? That he would have nowhere to live?’
‘No. That you might marry this woman?’
Was he being deliberately evasive?
‘I have no plans of that nature at the moment,’ he said briefly, and she had to be satisfied with that.
As the evening progressed Imogen gave herself up to enjoyment. Soon, like Cinderella, she would have to go dismally home, knowing that the magical night had been exactly that. A one-off occasion.
It would be Blair’s esteem that she was losing rather than a glass slipper, yet the effect would be just as disastrous. But in the meantime she was going to make the most of this time together. Maybe she could charm him into forgiving her deception.
Imogen was certainly charming, Blair thought as the evening ticked away. She was getting to him. His blood warmed every time their eyes met. His pulses were racing. His heartbeat quickening. Was she the one he’d been waiting for all this time? Someone he would want to be the mother of his children?
Her every word, look, gesture was mesmerising. He’d known the moment he’d seen her in the police station that night that it was fate. He’d invited her to join the practice against his better judgement and it had worked out fine. It was meant that they should be together.
The meal was almost over. They were enjoying coffee when his mobile rang. He listened for a moment and then said, ‘Can’t you get hold of someone else? I’m in the middle of an evening out.’
Blair sighed. He didn’t believe this. His presence was required by the city police, just as the magical evening with Imogen was at its peak.
‘All right. I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ he agreed sombrely, as he was informed that he was the only one they’d been able to get hold of.
As he replaced the phone in his jacket pocket he met her questioning hazel gaze.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘A suspicious death. The police have just pulled a body out of the canal.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
Blair eyed her in surprise.
‘No need. I’ll drop you off home first.’
Imogen shook her head.
‘I’d rather be in on it with you. For one thing you’re the most experienced of the police surgeons on the rota, so it will do me good to watch you in action…and for another I don’t want the evening to end.’
‘Neither do I,’ he told her huskily, and took her arm. ‘So let’s go and see what they’ve got for us.’
He was smiling as the car pulled away from the side of the restaurant.
‘The police said they’d tried to get hold of you but you weren’t around so they’ll be surprised when we turn up together. It will either set tongues wagging or they’ll take it for granted we’ve been on another job together.’
‘I imagine you wouldn’t like that,’ she remarked.
‘What?’
‘Tongues wagging.’
‘It would depend on what they were wagging about,’ he said blandly, as he swerved to avoid a car coming out of a side street.
The body of a man had been pulled out of the canal soon after darkness had fallen over the city. It was a recently renovated waterfront with a s
mattering of apartments and bars that would be crowded as the area’s night life took over, but at the time of the discovery of the corpse the area had been almost deserted.
‘We received an anonymous call to say that there was a body in the canal,’ the police officer in charge told them. ‘When we got here he was floating face down, but we don’t think he’d been in the water long.’
He pointed to the nearest bar.
‘One of the staff in that place heard a cry and a scuffle earlier on, but as they were busy getting set up for the evening trade he didn’t take much notice. He reckons that kind of thing goes on all the time.’
As the two police surgeons bent over the inert figure he informed them, ‘There was no pulse or heartbeat and resuscitation had no effect.’
Blair was eyeing the body consideringly.
‘If there was alcohol present and he stumbled into the water, his reflexes wouldn’t have been as sharp. Also he would have had a better chance if he’d been floating face up. In most cases of drowning, when the person starts taking in small amounts of water the laryngeal reflex, an automatic contraction of muscles at the entrance to the windpipe, directs the water to the oesophagus and stomach instead of into the lungs. But it can obstruct breathing which soon brings about unconsciousness.
‘However, if the person is still buoyant at that time and facing upwards, the muscles begin to relax and normal breathing may recommence. In this instance the odds are that he fell forward and remained in that position all the time he was in the water.
‘What do you think, Dr Rossiter?’ he asked his companion, giving her the opportunity to vouchsafe an opinion. ‘Are we looking at a suicide, foul play or an accident?’
Imogen didn’t answer immediately. She was observing the body with a thoughtful stare.
‘I’ve seen this guy somewhere before. I recognise the clothes and that strange ring on his hand. It’s the fellow who’d had the epileptic fit in the cells on the night we met.’
The two men were eyeing her in surprise.
‘Are you sure?’ Blair asked.
‘Yes,’ she told him firmly.
‘Well, in that case,’ he told the policeman, ‘you won’t have any trouble identifying him. They’ll have his name and address at the central police station where Dr Rossiter attended him. He was arrested a few weeks ago for assaulting his ex-wife’s new boyfriend. So it could be suicide, or the other fellow getting his own back, or even something different altogether.’
‘Such as him having an epileptic seizure while beside the canal?’ Imogen suggested.
Blair had finished examining the body and as he got to his feet he said, ‘There is a swelling above the temple which concerns me. If the victim fell in head first, or even sideways, I can’t see him banging his head on the bank, or anywhere else for that matter. Unless he hit debris that was already in the water. Or had already been struck before he fell in the canal.’
‘The man was in a dreadful state on the night he was arrested,’ Imogen reminded him. ‘It wouldn’t be surprising if he’d decided to end it all, but that wouldn’t allow for the blow to the head, would it?’
Blair nodded and, turning to the policeman, said, ‘I’ll speak to the pathology people and tell them what we’ve found and put them in the picture with regard to what Dr Rossiter knows of his domestic and health problems. You can move him now.’
As he drove Imogen home a little later Blair was conscious that the depressing incident they’d had to participate in had wiped out the sparkle of the night.
Before the phone call had brought him down to earth he’d been in a state of entrancement. Wanting to touch her, hold her, kiss the mobile mouth in that captivating face.
Maybe it had done him a favour, the voice of reason said. He’d only known Imogen a short time. Not long enough to be going overboard with crazy longing. He knew nothing about her past and only what he’d seen so far about her present.
She was a good doctor, daughter of the chief constable and had cast a spell over him, he thought with a quick glance at her profile in the shadowed confines of the car.
Aware of his gaze, Imogen asked, ‘What are you thinking?’
She knew it would be nothing like her own thoughts, which were centring around a confession that had been postponed. But she certainly wasn’t expecting him to say what he did.
‘I was wondering if we could take up where we left off before duty called,’ he said in a low voice. ‘How about asking me up for coffee?’
‘Yes, why not?’ she agreed with a suicidal smile. It had to be done so why not tell Blair about the baby in the privacy of her own home?
But the moment the door had closed behind them she found herself in his arms. Looking deep into her eyes, he said, ‘You know that I’m not bothered about coffee, don’t you, Imogen? That I want to make love to you. Tell me that you feel the same.’
There was a pain around her heart as if a knife had sliced into it, and tears welled up in her eyes. In different circumstances she would have melted at his touch. Told him joyously that she did feel the same. But how could she?
Unaware of the pain inside her, his arms had tightened. Holding her against the hard wall of his chest, he kissed her yearning mouth.
It would be so easy to give in to the moment, Imogen thought weakly as she kissed him back with brief, fierce longing. But reason was lurking. Common sense was ready to pounce, and if she hadn’t been honest with Blair before she knew that she had to be now.
‘Don’t, Blair,’ she begged against the mouth that was laying claim to hers.
His arms slackened, and he became still.
‘What is it?’ he asked slowly. ‘I thought…’
She took his hand and drew him towards the sofa.
‘I have something to tell you,’ she said in a low voice.
With the passion draining from him like water down the sink, he prompted, ‘What?’
‘I’m pregnant.’
‘Wha-at?’ he cried. ‘Who by? Why have you not mentioned it before?’
The questions were coming at her like bullets.
‘I wanted a little time in the job before I told you. In six months the pregnancy will be over and lots of women doctors work while they are carrying.’
‘Well, yes, of course they do,’ he agreed, still in a state of amazement.
‘But, Imogen, I’m angry that you let me make a fool of myself before telling me what’s going on in your life. Who’s the father?’
‘His name is…was…Sean Derwent.’
Blair hated seeing her so chastened. It had been Imogen’s zest and vibrance that he’d been attracted to.
But what was it that she’d just said? That Sean something or other was the child’s father and she had spoken as if he was no longer around. Had the rat deserted her when he’d found out?
‘So he’s in the past, then, this Sean guy?’ he questioned tightly.
Imogen had turned away, slender shoulders drooping.
‘Yes. He’s in the past. He’s dead, Blair.’
‘Oh, hell! What a mess!’
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ she said wearily. ‘I know I should have told you right from the beginning but I needed to prove to myself that I could pull my weight while I was pregnant.’
‘So you decided to deceive me,’ he commented flatly.
‘I didn’t lie, Blair,’ she said pleadingly. ‘I just kept quiet.’
‘And let me make a prize fool of myself tonight into the bargain.’
She was beginning to fight back.
‘This was to be my last night of being well thought of by you. I’d intended telling you in the restaurant but—’
‘You got a reprieve?’
‘Yes.’
‘And so what would you have done if I hadn’t asked myself up for coffee? Put it off until you had no choice in the matter?’
‘I don’t know,’ she told him. ‘I’ve been dreading this moment, because even though we haven’t known each other long I value your
respect. I don’t suppose that you ever do anything you’re ashamed of.’
He almost smiled.
‘Don’t start trying to get round me. Of course I do things that I regret. We all do. I’m just sorry that it’s taken you so long to tell me something I would have been happier to have known from the beginning. But at least, now that I do know, I can do some rearranging of my feelings, which I won’t allow to get out of hand again in a hurry.’
He was turning to go but had one last thing to say.
‘I’m sorry that the man who made you pregnant is dead. That is very sad for both you and the child.’
As Imogen opened her mouth to tell him the circumstances of Sean’s death, he held up his hand.
‘I’ve heard enough for one night, Imogen. Don’t say anything else.’ And on that final note he left.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN Blair arrived back at his own place he sat inside his car, staring into space. He was devastated. For the first time in years he’d been on the brink of falling in love. Enchanted by a woman who was carrying another man’s child—only he hadn’t known that.
It wasn’t Imogen’s fault that he’d felt the way he had. She hadn’t deliberately set out to attract him, but attract him she had, and now he felt sick in his stomach after the night’s revelations.
Why in the name of glory hadn’t she told him the truth at the beginning? he thought raggedly. And where did they go from here? Nowhere. If he took any notice of common sense.
He was a doctor, for heaven’s sake, only too acutely aware that nature hadn’t balanced the scales evenly when it came to the business of child-bearing.
It was the woman’s body that was fashioned to carry the foetus, the woman who bore the pain during childbirth, and in situations where she was left to cope alone there wasn’t always the support and sympathy she deserved. It was so easy to make a child, but the act in itself could change her life forever.
Yet had he remembered that tonight when he’d been ranting on at Imogen? No, he hadn’t. He’d let disappointment and pique make him less than the charitable person that he was.
Tomorrow he would ask her what had happened to her child’s father and how much he’d meant to her. One thing he wouldn’t be discussing was what had been in his heart earlier.
The Pregnant Police Surgeon Page 5