She crumpled like a wet tissue. ‘Thanks. I’ll hold you to that.’
‘Better?’
‘Mmm.’
It was only nine o’clock, but she was almost asleep, lying on her tummy along Patrick’s sofa while he sat at one end with her feet in his lap, her neat little bottom just within reach. Pretty feet, he thought, even if the blisters were horrendous and her soles tender from the walk and the day on duty. He let his hands drift to a halt, but she wriggled her toes and lifted her head a fraction.
‘Don’t stop,’ she said sleepily, and his hands started to move again, slowly soothing, his fingers gently kneading.
‘I’ll keep going on one condition.’
‘What?’
He took a risk. ‘Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.’ Mistake. She stiffened, pulling her feet away, but he held onto them gently. ‘Tell me.’
‘No. Katie—’
‘Katie’s fast asleep.’
She shook her head emphatically. ‘No. Not here. Not now.’
‘Later, then. When I take you home.’
‘Why?’ she whispered, turning round and pulling her knees up under her chin, her eyes anguished. ‘Why do you want to know? Why do you care?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I just do.’
‘I don’t like it. I don’t need people fussing over me.’
‘I’m not fussing.’
‘Yes, you are. There was no need for you to do my carpet, or follow me home in the first place. There was no need for you to cook for us tonight, or do my blisters or any of it. So why?’
‘Because I like you,’ he answered honestly. ‘And I want to get to know you better.’
‘In what way?’
He smiled and gave a soft huff of laughter. ‘In any way you’ll let me.’
She blinked and quickly looked away. ‘I don’t have affairs.’
‘I haven’t asked you yet,’ he pointed out softly, glad that her feet were no longer in his lap because even the thought...
‘Good. Don’t, because the answer will be no.’ She got up, going over to her sleeping daughter and shaking her shoulder. ‘Katie, darling, wake up now. It’s time to go home.’
And he knew he’d lost her. Lost the chance to find out more about her, lost the chance to help her out of whatever hole she was in, lost the chance of ever finding out what it would be like to kiss her...
‘Could you, please, take us home now?’ she said, and the misery in her eyes made him want to kick himself, because he’d put it there, dredged up whatever it was that was troubling her and brought it back to the fore.
‘Sure,’ he said, and with a quiet sigh he pulled on his fleece, picked up his car keys and opened the door. ‘Let’s go.’
Katie stumbled sleepily to her feet, leaning on her mother as Annie ushered her out of the house and into Patrick’s car. He drove the two streets to their house and pulled up outside.
One last try...
‘Annie—’
‘No. I’m sorry, Patrick.’
And she got out of the car, led Katie to the door, went through it and closed it behind them, leaving him firmly on the outside...
CHAPTER THREE
Mercifully, Patrick wasn’t around much the following day.
He had a fracture clinic in the morning, and outpatients in the afternoon, and Annie managed to be busy elsewhere when he came up to check his post-ops.
Not that it was hard to be busy. Apart from all the other patients on the ward who needed her attention, Patrick’s post ops took much of her time. By the time she arrived on the ward he’d cleared Debbie Wade for discharge after her arthroscopy and cartilage repair, and she went off mid-morning armed with her painkillers, paperwork and discharge instructions. Mr Forrest went at lunchtime when his wife finished work, so his paperwork had to be put in order, too. But Patrick’s hip replacements were side by side, getting on like a house on fire and discovering a whole host of mutual acquaintances, and it was taking both of their minds off the pain.
‘Just think, we’ve lived only three streets apart for the last thirty years and never met! ’ Mrs Evans said cheerfully when Annie went to check her dressings and the wound drain.
‘And she knows my sister and I’ve even heard her talk about her! Isn’t that so strange?’ Mrs Dane chipped in from behind the curtains.
Very strange, Annie thought as she left them, everything looking good and both of them making excellent progress. Annie wondered what the chances were of her living two streets from Patrick and never seeing him outside work, and decided they were slight to none. More’s the pity, she thought, but even though she meant it, there was a pang of regret because they’d been getting on so well, and it was only when he’d started asking questions and commenting on her kitchen that she’d realised just how much of herself she’d have to give away if she were to have a relationship with him.
Even assuming that was what he’d been after! He might just have been being kind about her stupid feet.
Although he had said something that suggested rather more than that.
I want to get to know you better.
In what way?
He’d laughed that lovely, slightly husky laugh. In any way you’ll let me.
Even then she’d tried to put him off. I don’t have affairs.
I haven’t asked you yet.
Yet?
No. She couldn’t go there—couldn’t open up to him that much. It was all just too raw, too humiliating.
But it would have been so nice, just for once, to have a man lavish some attention on her, take her out, spoil her a little— and she knew he’d spoil her, given a chance. He’d know how to treat a woman, she was sure of that, and the lonely ache in her heart longed to give him that chance.
But she couldn’t let him get that close, because he’d want to know what had happened, and she couldn’t talk about it, couldn’t bear to dredge it all up—
‘How are the feet?’
She jumped and wheeled round, hand on her chest, and found him inches away, a half-smile playing on his lips.
‘You scared the living daylights out of me,’ she scolded, trying not to smile back.
‘Sorry,’ he said, not looking in the slightest bit repentant. ‘I wondered what time you were going home.’
‘Shortly. I’m on a nine to five shift today.’
‘Good. I’ll walk you home and help you put your furniture back. I want to check that the carpet’s OK.’
Her heart skipped a beat. ‘That’s not necessary,’ she told him. ‘It’s fine. I looked at it this morning.’ In fact, it was dreadful, the blobs of paint and the marks that had refused to come out more noticeable now it was clean everywhere else, and without the dirt the hideous pattern was all the more obvious. But at least she didn’t have to be so ashamed of it any more! And she could always sling down that old rug she’d put in the loft.
‘You’ll need help with the furniture, though,’ he pointed out, clearly not in a hurry to admit defeat. ‘Those chairs weigh a ton.’ And he’d stacked them up on top of the sofa. On purpose? Probably, the aggravating man. He just didn’t know how to give up. Even a bowl of water flung at him hadn’t put him off. She had to give him ten out of ten for persistence.
‘All right, but just a few minutes to arrange the furniture,’ she said. ‘And then I’ll have to get Katie.’ Not then, exactly, but... ‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘Shall we go?’
She wondered what ‘whatever’ really meant, and decided she’d probably rather not know! ‘I have to hand over the keys—can you give me ten minutes before we leave?’
‘Sure. How are Mrs Evans and Mrs Dane?’
‘Fine. Raj came and had a look and was happy, so I’ve taken out the drains and their drips are down. They’re doing really well.’
‘Good. I’ll go and have a chat to them while you finish off.’
‘If you can get a word in edgeways,’ she said with a laugh, and went to find her staff nurse to hand over the keys.
‘Better,’ Annie replied, realising that they were, due in no small part to Patrick’s meticulous attention and his padded blister plasters with their special non-adherent surface. ‘It was just the walk. If it hadn’t been muddy I would have done it in these shoes, because we must surely walk miles every day.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Sue said with a groan. ‘That man in isolation’s been driving me mad, and every time we go in there we have to gown up and scrub, and then scrub again on the way out—I swear my hands could sand down woodwork if I had enough energy left for decorating after running about after him all day!’
She chuckled. ‘I know the feeling. Right, I have to go, time to pick up Katie,’ she said, and then wondered belatedly how many people would see her leave the ward with Patrick and wonder what they were doing together.
One would be too many! The hospital was a gossip mill, and she needed that like a hole in the head. She’d been the subject of gossip enough to last a lifetime, and she didn’t intend to go there again.
She came out of the treatment room as Patrick walked up, and to his credit he just smiled and said, ‘Knocking-off time?’
‘Yes,’ she replied, hoping he wouldn’t say any more, but he didn’t, just fell into step beside her and walked out of the ward quite naturally, talking about Mrs Evans and Mrs Dane, as colleagues would.
Which, of course, was all they were!
‘You’re walking better,’ he said once they were in the corridor.
‘Yes. They’re fine today.’
‘Don’t forget to change the plasters. You’ve got the others, haven’t you?’
‘Goodness, you’re such a worry-wart! Yes, I’ve got the others, thank you! Whatever did you find to worry about before you met me?’
His face lost its light for a moment, and she was prickled again by curiosity.
‘Oh, this and that,’ he said lightly, but she wasn’t fooled. Something she’d said had struck a nerve, and not for the first time. And, like her, he wasn’t talking about it. ‘So where’s Katie’s school?’ he asked, changing the subject completely and leaving her curiosity unsatisfied.
‘Two streets away, the other direction from you,’ she told him, glad to be back onto a neutral subject. ‘Some days Lynn takes her and I can get there to pick her up, depending on the rota, but other times, like yesterday and today, Lynn collects her.’
‘You’re lucky she can be flexible,’ he said, and she nodded.
‘I am,’ she said with feeling. ‘Very lucky. Without her I wouldn’t be able to work.’ And they’d be homeless, bankrupt and living on benefit in a bedsit—or lying in a doorway, like Alfie. She shuddered. It didn’t bear thinking about.
She turned onto her path, fished in her bag for the keys and let them in. He walked past her while she was shrugging off her coat, chucked his jacket over the bottom of the banisters and went into the sitting room, crouching down to feel the carpet, running his fingers over it experimentally.
‘OK, I believe you. It’s fine.’
‘I know that. I told you it was.’
He eyed it critically. ‘It’s pretty shot.’
‘I know that, too. It’ll have to do for now. I can put a rug down to cover up the worst.’
Although the rug, to be honest, was probably as bad the carpet, but at least it was plain and would cover up the pattern!
‘Right, let’s get this furniture sorted. In fact, how about a quick cup of tea while I move the chairs?’
‘No milk. I have to get it on the way to Katie,’ she said, sticking to her guns. In fact she didn’t have to get Katie till six-thirty today, because Lynn took her swimming with her own children after school on Tuesdays, but Patrick didn’t have to know that. So long as he didn’t ask the exact time, she’d be fine, but she drew the line at lying outright. She’d been lied to enough. She didn’t do it to other people.
She really didn’t have any milk, though, and if he would only just go she could get to the shop round the corner and buy some, together with a few other bits and pieces, and have time to put her feet up and have a quiet cuppa for ten minutes before she picked Katie up.
But then he blew any chance of that, because he asked, ‘What time do you have to get her?’ And then it was a straight choice of lying to him or revealing that, in fact, there was no hurry at all.
She sighed, ‘Six-thirty—but I have to go shopping on the way.’
He frowned at his watch. ‘But it’s five-thirty now. You’ll be tight to get to the supermarket and back before then with the rush-hour traffic.’
‘I don’t go to the supermarket,’ she said, ‘I go to the little shop in the arcade round the corner.’
His brows scrunched together. ‘It’s very expensive.’
‘Not for the few things I buy. By the time I pay the bus fare to the supermarket and back, it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other.’
Heavens. If he scowled any harder, he’d need Botox for the frown lines. ‘Haven’t you got a car?’
She shook her head. ‘Why do I need a car? I live five minutes from work, five minutes from my childminder, five minutes from Katie’s school.’ And there was no way she could afford it, so it was utterly academic.
He hoisted a chair down off the sofa as if it weighed nothing, set it on its castors and pushed it into position in the bay window, then lifted the other one down, shoved it across so it sat opposite and then looked up at her, his hands still propped on the arms of the chair, his brows still scrunched up in that frown.
‘No car, no kitchen, no shoes, no food—what’s going on, Annie? Are you in trouble?’
She swallowed and backed away, turning on her heel and walking through into the hall. She couldn’t do this. Couldn’t talk to him...
‘I’m sorry. Tell me it’s none of my business.’
‘It’s none of your business,’ she said, and she heard his soft laugh, just a moment before his hands closed over her shoulders and drew her back against his chest.
‘OK. It’s none of my business. I’ll butt out—but if you need help, if there’s ever anything I can do, just ask. Please. Promise me.’
‘I have friends,’ she pointed out, resisting the urge to lean back against that massive, solid chest.
‘I’m sure. I’d be surprised if you didn’t. I’m just offering you another avenue of assistance, another shoulder, another port in the storm.’
She wouldn’t think about his shoulders. ‘What makes you think there’s a storm?’ she asked, and he glanced into’ her kitchen and laughed under his breath.
‘Call me old-fashioned, but most people have kitchen cupboards and sinks and suchlike.’
‘I have. It’s all bought and planned,’ she said, and then stretched the truth. ‘It’s just waiting for the fitters.’
‘Ah. Sorry. I just had a feeling it had been like that for some time.’
Did he notice everything? ‘It has,’ she admitted reluctantly.
‘Getting tradesmen in is a nightmare,’ he said, offering her a way out, but she was sick of half-truths and evasion and, anyway, telling him was probably the only way to shut him up.
‘I can’t afford a tradesman,’ she said bluntly.
‘So why strip it out?’
She shrugged his hands off and moved away. ‘Change of circumstances after it was started.’
‘Lousy timing.’
Her laugh cracked in the middle. ‘That’s the understatement of the century.’ Not that there could have been a good time for what had happened.
He glanced at his watch again. ‘Look, why don’t I go with you to the shop, then we can pick up my car, drop your shopping home and pick up Katie? We can talk about this later.’
‘Or I can walk to the shop, do my shopping, go and pick up Katie and walk home.’
His grin was crooked and appe
aling. ‘Then I don’t get a chance to find out what you and Katie like to eat and engineer a meal for you.’
She turned and stared at him, utterly puzzled. ‘Why would you want to? You’ve already fed me two nights running.’
His grin got cheekier. ‘Habit?’ he suggested, and she couldn’t help but laugh.
‘You’re wicked.’
‘I’d like to be.’
And then their eyes locked, and she felt her heart pick up, a slow, heavy beat as she waited, breathless, for him to make the next move.
He was going to kiss her. Surely he was going to kiss her...
‘So, are we going to the shop?’ he said, breaking eye contact and ramming his hands into his trouser pockets as he turned away.
She took a moment to gather her composure. Good grief, it had been so long since anybody had flirted with her that she didn’t know how to respond! And he was flirting—wasn’t he? Her heart pounded, the beat echoing in parts of her body that she’d almost forgotten existed.
‘Well, I am, after I’ve changed out of my uniform,’ she said in the end, and he turned back to her.
‘Mind if I wait for you and go with you?’
‘Does it matter if I mind?’
‘Of course it does. Annie, I’m not stalking you, I’m just trying to be a friend.’
Friend. OK. She relented. ‘I’ll go and change. Give me two minutes.’
Patrick watched her run lightly up the stairs, listened to her opening and shutting drawers, heard the sound of water running as she cleaned her teeth.
He didn’t want to think about what she was doing up there, stripping off her uniform and running about in her underwear. He was having enough trouble trying not to think about getting her out of her clothes, without being so utterly aware of her doing it. He went into the kitchen, stared around at it and sighed. Their houses were identical, small 1930s detached family homes, and yet they couldn’t have been more different. His kitchen and dining room had been knocked together and fitted out with bright, fresh units and modem appliances, whereas this...
A Wife and Child to Cherish (Audley Memorial Hospital) Page 4