‘In a sort of posy-type thing,’ he muttered. ‘And I’ll take them with me.’
And never ever set foot in this shop again, he thought grimly as the girl began wrapping the flowers in some colourful paper.
‘I didn’t expect to see you this evening, David,’ Annie exclaimed as she ushered her brother through to her sitting room.
‘I thought I’d just stop by, see how you were doing,’ he replied, reaching out to catch Jamie as his nephew hurtled towards him with a shriek of delight. ‘And find out how you’re getting on with your ordinary—but not that ordinary—boss.’
‘Fine, thank you,’ she said evenly.
‘That sounds promising.’
‘David, he’s my boss, end of story,’ Annie insisted, annoyingly aware that the warmth she could feel edging across her cheeks was totally belying her words.
‘A boss who rushes in like a knight in shining armour to thwart your grumpy landlady? Sounds more like the beginning of a nice romance to me.’
‘David.’
‘OK, OK—if you don’t want to tell me, then don’t,’ he declared, ruffling Jamie’s blond hair affectionately. ‘I’ll find out eventually.’
He would, too, Annie thought ruefully. He always did.
‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ she asked, deliberately changing the subject, only to groan when she heard her front doorbell.
Surely it couldn’t be Mrs Patterson again? She’d already endured one long diatribe from her landlady this afternoon, and the last thing she needed was another one.
But it wasn’t Mrs Patterson on her doorstep. It was Gideon, looking uncharacteristically ill at ease and uncomfortable.
‘I can’t stay long,’ he said quickly. ‘I just wondered if I might have a word?’
‘Of course you can,’ she replied, ushering him down the hall, but when they reached the sitting room Gideon came to an uncertain halt.
‘I didn’t realise you had company.’
‘I haven’t—it’s just David.’ She smiled. ‘David, this is my boss—Gideon Caldwell. Gideon, this is—’
‘Jamie,’ Gideon finished for her.
His voice sounded odd. Thick and slightly constricted. His eyes were riveted on Jamie with an expression Annie didn’t understand. She glanced across at David questioningly but he was no help at all. In fact, from the grin on his face, he seemed to be finding something strangely amusing.
Well, somebody had to say something, she decided, so she said the first thing that came into her head. ‘What lovely flowers.’
Gideon stared down at the posy in his hand, almost, she thought, as though he’d forgotten they were there.
‘They’re a gift,’ he muttered. ‘For…for one of my patients.’
‘Oh, how very kind,’ she exclaimed. ‘Which one?’
‘I mean…I meant an ex-patient,’ he said quickly. ‘Someone…someone before your time.’
‘Do I scent the hint of a romance here, Mr Caldwell?’ David asked, his blue eyes dancing.
‘Certainly not,’ Gideon exclaimed, his cheeks reddening. ‘She—The patient and I—’
‘Would you like a cup of coffee, Gideon?’ Annie interrupted, shooting a glance at her brother which said, Stop it.
‘No—thank you. I’d better get back to the hospital.’
He was halfway down the hall before Annie caught up with him.
‘But I thought you said you wanted a word with me?’ she protested.
‘It’ll keep. It wasn’t that important anyway.’
Important enough for you to leave the hospital, she wanted to say. Important enough for you to drive all the way over here. But before she could say anything he’d gone, and she shook her head as she went back to the sitting room.
‘David, that was seriously weird. One minute he’s standing there, saying he wants a word with me, and the next…’
‘I’m not surprised he left.’
‘You’re not?’ she said in confusion.
‘Those flowers. He brought them for you.’
‘Rubbish,’ she protested. ‘You heard what he said.’
‘Yeah, I heard.’
‘David, if he’d brought me flowers, he’d have given them to me,’ she said with exasperation.
‘Not if he figured we were lovers—that I was Jamie’s father.’
Her jaw dropped. ‘Why in the world would he think that?’
Her brother smiled at her affectionately. ‘You know, for a pretty smart lady, you can be awfully dumb at times. Look at this,’ he continued, tugging at his hair as she scowled at him. ‘It’s blond, like Jamie’s blond, and my eyes are blue—’
‘So are mine.’
‘And I’m sitting here in your flat, like I belong. The poor guy’s put two and two together and come up with twenty-five.’
It made sense, and she supposed she ought to have found it funny, but she didn’t. She half started towards the door, then stopped.
‘Go after him, love,’ her brother said, watching her. ‘Explain who I am.’
It was what she wanted to do, what a very large part of her wanted to do, but…
‘It’s better this way,’ she murmured.
‘Better—or safer?’ David shook his head. ‘Annie, using me as a smokescreen so you don’t have to face up to reality, admit you might actually have feelings—needs—that someone like Gideon Caldwell could answer, is the coward’s way out.’
She didn’t answer him—couldn’t. Didn’t even want to consider that her brother might possibly be right.
Instead, she scooped Jamie off his knee and said, ‘I think it’s time for your bath, young man.’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘YOU’RE looking distinctly harassed this morning, Annie,’ Tom declared as they scrubbed up together at the sinks. ‘Anything I can help you with?’
Only if you know a cast-iron way of persuading my brother to keep his interfering nose out of my business. Only if you can dream up something that will make my son go willingly to the day-care centre again without having to be constantly bribed. And only if you can put an end to the dreams I keep having about Gideon Caldwell. Dreams which are silly and stupid, and make me feel hot and embarrassed whenever I remember them.
‘I’m just suffering from a bad attack of February blues, that’s all,’ she replied lightly.
‘Gideon’s been a bit down, too, these last couple of days,’ Tom observed, turning off the tap with his elbow. ‘Kind of grouchy, wouldn’t you say?’
She would, but she preferred not to think about it.
‘Carol Bannerman’s our first patient this morning, isn’t she?’ she said instead.
Tom nodded. ‘Gideon should be doing her op, but he’s in Theatre 2 because of that multiple pile-up on the M8. One of the drivers is eight months pregnant and it looks touch and go for both her and her baby.’
Annie had seen the ambulances this morning on her way to work. Roaring up Duke Street, their sirens wailing, powering through the busy early morning traffic.
‘I wonder what’s wrong with Gideon?’ Tom continued as he reached for more soap.
She’d hoped he’d given up on the subject, but he obviously hadn’t.
‘Seasonal affective disorder syndrome, like the rest of us?’ she suggested with a smile, but it didn’t get her anywhere. In fact, Tom’s frown deepened.
‘Helen reckons he’s got girl trouble, but I can’t see how when he’s not dating anyone.’
Determinedly Annie continued scrubbing her hands.
‘It’s not like him,’ Tom continued. ‘He’s usually so easygoing and laid-back, but something’s obviously got under his skin.’
Me, according to my brother, she thought ruefully.
‘You’re a fool, Annie,’ he’d said when he’d left on Monday night. ‘OK, so Nick hurt you badly, but that was more than four years ago. You’ve got to forget—move on—and stop running away from any man who shows the least bit of interest in you.’
He was right, she knew he was
, but she was scared, so very scared. Yes, she was attracted to Gideon Caldwell, but to let down her guard, allow herself to trust a man again, and not just any man, but another man who was her boss…
She couldn’t do it. This time it wouldn’t just be her who would get hurt if it all went wrong. This time there was Jamie to consider. If he became fond of Gideon, and Gideon walked away, she would never forgive herself.
‘Ready to start, Annie?’
Carol Bannerman’s fibroid op, yes, she thought as she followed Tom into the operating theatre. A relationship with Gideon, no. No way.
‘Vital signs, Barry?’ Tom asked.
‘Fine. No problems this end,’ the anaesthetist answered.
‘OK, let’s roll.’
Deftly Tom made several tiny incisions into Carol’s abdominal wall to accommodate the laparoscope and other instruments he needed, then ushered Annie forward so she could look inside the woman’s uterus.
‘As you can see, she has quite a few fibroids, and they’re rather scattered,’ he observed, ‘but none are unduly large so hopefully electrosurgery will remove them completely.’
‘Would there have been a problem if her fibroids had been much bigger?’ she asked, stepping back to let Tom begin the delicate task of burning out the fibroids.
‘Just the usual ones associated with any kind of surgery—excessive bleeding and infection. Excessive bleeding is certainly more of a danger with very large tumours, but so long as you have an ample supply of compatible blood it’s not too much of a problem. And avoidance of infection is generally a matter of good nursing after-care.’
He was an excellent teacher. Quiet, calm and tolerant, too, of the many questions she asked.
‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ he said with a smile once Carol’s operation was over and Annie had stayed on to assist him with a bladder repair and then a hysterectomy.
‘There’s so much to learn,’ she said, following him into the changing room to scrub up again in preparation for Louise Harper’s laparoscopy, ‘but, yes. I’m really enjoying it.’
‘Perhaps you’re meant to be a surgeon,’ he commented, pulling off his soiled theatre top.
It didn’t matter if she was, she thought with a slight sigh. Surgeons worked long and unpredictable hours and, with Jamie to look after, it really wasn’t a serious option.
‘It’s your suspected PID next, isn’t it?’ Tom continued. ‘Gideon told me you how you managed to persuade her—’ He grimaced as his bleeper went off. ‘Sorry, but it looks like Louise’s op is cancelled for this morning. Nobody bleeps me in Theatre unless it’s an emergency. Could you let Barry know not to prep her?’
Annie nodded but her heart sank as Tom rushed off. When she’d seen Louise earlier that morning the girl had already obviously been having second thoughts, and she dreaded to think what she’d do now. Sign herself out probably, but an emergency always took priority over everything else.
Reluctantly she pulled off her theatre top, and was just about to dump it in the laundry basket when the door of the changing room clattered open.
‘Where’s Tom?’ Gideon demanded.
‘I…um…’ Oh, cripes, but this is ridiculous, she told herself, all too aware that she was clutching her theatre top to her like some prudish Victorian miss. Gideon had probably seen hundreds—if not thousands—of completely naked women during his career, so the sight of her in a plain white cotton bra was hardly likely to embarrass him. It embarrassed the hell out of her, though. ‘His…his bleeper went off. I was—I’m just going—to tell Barry we’ll have to cancel Louise’s op.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Tom’s gone,’ she said in confusion. ‘And there’s nobody here to perform the operation.’
‘I’m a surgeon, aren’t I?’ he snapped, ‘or are you dashing off as usual to pick up your son?’
The unfairness of his remark cut her to the quick. She had never left the hospital early. In fact, the staff at Jamie’s day-care centre were becoming very snippy about the number of times she’d arrived late to collect him, but she had no intention of arguing with Gideon, not when he was in this mood. Instead, she pulled a fresh theatre top over her head.
‘I’m ready whenever you are, Mr Caldwell.’
For a second he glared at her furiously, then dragged his hands through his already tousled hair. ‘Oh, hell, I’m sorry. That was totally uncalled-for, wasn’t it? Taking my anger out on you. I’m sorry, Annie, truly sorry.’
And he looked awful, she suddenly realised. His face was drawn and ashen, his eyes red-rimmed with fatigue. Something was clearly very badly wrong, and as she continued to stare at him she also noticed something else. He was wearing theatre scrubs and they were stained with blood.
‘The pregnant woman you were operating on,’ she said tentatively. ‘The one involved in the multiple crash—’
‘She made it, the baby didn’t.’
His voice was tight, rough, and she half stretched out her hand to him, only to let it fall. ‘Gideon, I’m sorry.’
‘She was drunk, Annie,’ he spat out. ‘Half past seven in the morning, eight months pregnant with her unborn child, and driving with her other two kids in the back seat, and she was drunk.’
She stared at him, aghast. ‘Her other children—are they all right?’
‘Her son has a fractured leg and arm. His two-year-old sister has a fractured skull and major facial lacerations.’ He was pacing the changing-room floor now as though he feared that if he stood still too long all the anger within him might explode. ‘What kind of woman gets into a car blind drunk, Annie? If she didn’t give a damn about herself, you’d think she’d at least have thought about her kids for once.’
‘For once…You mean, you think she’s been drunk before?’
‘The baby I delivered had some of the worst symptoms of foetal alcohol syndrome I’ve ever seen,’ he said grimly. ‘Facial deformities, stunted limbs…And do you want to hear something really ironic? Her husband’s a GP.’
‘He’s a doctor?’ she gasped. ‘But—’
‘I know.’ He nodded. ‘You’d think she, of all people, would know there really is no safe period during which a pregnant woman can drink too much. All the alcohol passes straight across the placental barrier to the foetus.’
‘Her husband, does he know—about the baby—her drinking?’
‘He does now.’ His face twisted. ‘It wasn’t…pleasant telling him. He called me a liar, and a lot worse. Swore he’d never seen a drop of alcohol pass her lips, which means either he’s a liar, or she’s damn clever.’
‘Oh, Gideon…’
‘It’s the waste, Annie, the stupid, pointless waste,’ he exclaimed bitterly. ‘To drink as much as she’s obviously been doing for the past eight months—to knowingly harm her own unborn child—that would have been bad enough, but I saw her daughter. Her face—her little face—it’s smashed to bits.’
She gazed at him silently. He obviously badly needed somebody to hold him, to comfort him. Do it, her mind whispered. If it was anybody else you wouldn’t hesitate for a second, so do it—help him.
Awkwardly she took a step forward, only to come to a halt when the door of the changing room opened and one of the theatre sisters appeared.
‘Mr Caldwell, Barry wants to know whether you want Louise Harper prepped, or…?’
He rubbed his hands wearily across his face. ‘Five minutes, Sister. Give me five minutes to scrub up, and I’ll be with you.’
‘Gideon, are you sure about this?’ Annie asked, the minute the girl had gone. ‘I could page Woody, ask her to—’
‘You promised Louise I’d do it, and I’ll do it,’ he replied, yanking his theatre top off and throwing it into the laundry basket. ‘Work is what I need right now, Annie. Not time to think, and brood.’
She badly needed work, too, she thought as she stared at the broad, muscular chest he’d just exposed. That, or a very long, very cold shower.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, get
a grip, Annie, she told herself. It’s a chest. All men have chests. You saw Tom’s earlier and it didn’t make your heart race, or your breath feel as though it had been sucked right out of your lungs. But, then, Tom’s theatre top hadn’t hidden a chest which was covered with a swathe of silky smooth dark hair that disappeared tantalisingly down into the waistband of his theatre trousers. Tom’s chest hadn’t been anywhere near as broad, or as muscular, or as just plain damn desirable.
‘Annie?’
Gideon was gazing at her curiously, and she whirled towards the sink and began scrubbing up as though her very life depended on it. Lord, had he seen her staring at him—realised what she was thinking, feeling? Please, heaven, he hadn’t, or she’d never be able to look him in the face again.
‘I…I won’t be a minute,’ she said, trying and failing to keep her voice steady.
He didn’t answer and she shot him a swift sidelong glance. Maybe he hadn’t actually caught her staring, but he’d obviously seen her blush because he was pulling a fresh theatre top out of the cupboard and dragging it swiftly over his head.
Nick would never have done that. Nick would have taken full advantage of the situation, teased her about the blush, demanded to know what had caused it. Gideon had clearly seen her embarrassment, realised he was the cause—and had immediately done something to rectify it.
Unfortunately.
Oh, pull yourself together, she told herself crossly when Gideon silently began scrubbing up beside her. What’s happened to your resolve, your determination never to get involved with a man again, and certainly not with another consultant? One glimpse of a broad, masculine chest and you’re falling to bits.
Well, you can jolly well stick yourself back together again, she thought when the theatre sister put her head round the changing-room door to announce that Louise Harper was fully anaesthetised.
She’d have to be insane to let down her guard, no matter how enticing the temptation, and the one thing she wasn’t at the moment was insane. Nuts, yes, but insane, no.
It took only a few minutes for Gideon to make the small incision he needed into Louise’s abdomen. Quickly he inserted the tiny flexible tube which would allow him to view her internal abdominal and pelvic organs, but as soon as he’d linked it to the video camera and flicked on the monitor screen, he groaned.
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