‘That’s the best time to keep a secret,’ Lucy said in a theatrical whisper. ‘I’ll go to my grave with Patrick thinking he was my one and only.’
‘Lucy!’ Bella squealed.
‘And I’m sure I’m not alone. Men just like to think they’ve got us all worked out. His ego’s bruised, that’s all. Now, don’t you dare leave without giving me your phone number.’
Happily Bella wrote it down. Funny how on such a gloomy day she’d made what she just knew would be a close friend.
‘You take care.’ Lucy smiled, tired now and resting back on her pillow. ‘And don’t fret, he’ll soon come around.’
If only Bella could be so sure. She heard his footsteps coming up behind her, and could sense his awkwardness, the slight air of detachment in his voice as he called out to her.
‘Leaving without saying goodbye?’
And there he was, blond hair white under the fluorescent lights, his complexion a touch paler than she remembered.
‘I just…’ Her voice trailed off, words failing her when she needed them most. She felt his eyes taking in her outfit and coming to the same conclusion Lucy had.
‘How was the funeral?’
‘Awful.’ Bella gave a wan smile. ‘Although everyone kept insisting at the wake how wonderful it had been, what a magnificent send-off Danny had had, but I’d say “awful” just about sums it up.’
‘Did you come to pick up the car?’
Bella nodded. ‘I got the note on the windscreen and thought I’d come in and say hi to Hannah and the girls. I saw Lucy as well. It’s good news, isn’t it?’
‘Great,’ Heath agreed, without adding anything further. His eyes were definitely guarded, the polite small talk over, and she could almost feel his discomfort, wishing she knew how to end it, how to simply tell her legs to walk away.
‘I’d better go,’ Bella said, and her silent prayer went unanswered as Heath gave an understanding nod.
‘Me, too. It’s been pretty busy.’
And there was nothing she could do but say goodbye, the writing so large on the wall she’d have to be blind not to read it. Whatever they had started had clearly already ended.
Her lie by omission was just too big for a new relationship to bear.
‘Do you want a coffee?’ Heart stilling, she looked up at him, but Heath didn’t meet her eyes and even though a coffee was the last thing she wanted now, dumbly Bella nodded, following him into his tiny office and staring at the chaos as he closed the door behind them. Papers billowed on his desk, bookcases overflowed with books, coffee mugs littered every piece of available surface.
‘I lied to you as well that night.’ His back was to her so she couldn’t read his expression. ‘I’m actually the untidiest guy you’re ever likely to meet. It drove Jackie to distraction.’
‘But your house is spotless.’
‘I have a cleaner—every day,’ Heath added, pouring coffee out of the percolator and spooning sugar into it with a hand that was far from steady. ‘I guess I was trying to impress you.’
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you.’ Accepting the cup he was holding out to her, Bella wrapped her hands around it. ‘I admit I wanted to, but I simply couldn’t, the same way you’d never betray a patient’s confidence whatever the personal cost.’
‘I know,’ Heath answered simply, and something flared inside as he finally managed to look at her. ‘I knew the second you walked into the police station that you had been right not to tell me. Yes, I think I might somehow have tried to warn Jayne, and even if I’d managed not to, I’d probably have acted differently. I just need to be sure of one thing…’ He swallowed hard and Bella didn’t make him finish, knowing what was on his mind.
‘I knew it wasn’t you,’ Bella whispered, and now it was her turn to ask the hard questions, her turn to lift accusing eyes to his.
‘Why didn’t you call, Heath? Why, when you surely knew I needed you to be there for me, did you choose to stay away? I know you must have been hurting, but did you need to punish me?’
‘Bella!’ Aghast, he captured her chin, forced her eyes back up to look at him. ‘You really think I was trying to punish you? I was trying to help you…’
‘Help me?’ Bella gasped. ‘By keeping away from me? This has been the hardest week of my life. I’ve been trying to mourn Danny and all I could think of was you.’
‘Not all,’ Heath suggested gently, and Bella nodded, giving in to the tears, allowing herself to lean on him for a moment, to draw comfort from the arms that were wrapped around her.
‘I’m going to miss him for ever.’
‘I know,’ Heath soothed. ‘I know you will, and I’ve been dying to call and see how you’re doing. I’ve driven past your flat more times than I can count, wanting so much to come in, to see how you were doing, to be there for you.’
‘Then why didn’t you?’
‘Jackie.’ The single word stilled her. ‘I never thought I’d be asking my ex-wife for advice about my love life, but I didn’t know who else to talk to. I asked her what she thought I should do.’
‘And what did she say?’ A tiny smile flickered on the edge of Bella’s lips despite her tears, as she heard this confident, self-assured man falter. But Heath couldn’t see it, her face firmly nestled in his chest and quite happy to stay there.
‘That you probably needed space, that I should hold back for a while, give you time to sort out things in your mind. And it made sense. After all, when Danny was dying you asked me to leave.’
‘I did that for Danny,’ Bella said softly. ‘And when you dropped me off at the station I was too tired and too upset to argue my point about being undercover, but I still wanted you near.’
‘You told me to go home,’ Heath pointed out, lifting her chin and gazing down at her. ‘You said that was what you wanted.’
‘I lied,’ Bella admitted, only this time happily so.
‘We’ll take things very slowly.’ He was showering her face with kisses as he spoke. ‘There’s absolutely no need to rush things.’ His lips met her frown. ‘What have I said wrong now?’
‘More advice from Jackie?’ Wriggling free, she fixed him with her best version of a firm stare even though her heart was soaring.
‘So I guess if we’re going to take things slowly, that rules out any deep and meaningful conversations, Heath, and perhaps we should limit seeing each other to once or twice a week, just to be safe.’ She registered his horrified face before she threw in her final card. ‘And I assume if we’re taking things slowly, that means no sex as well?’
Finally, he was lost for words, but Bella had enough for both of them.
‘I hate to state the obvious, Heath, but Jackie’s probably the last person you should be going to for advice on your love life. You two didn’t make it, remember?’
‘But we’re going to.’ It was a statement, not a question. He pulled her back into arms as welcoming and familiar as if she’d been waiting for them for a lifetime and said it again because it was the one thing she really needed to hear.
‘We’re going to make this work, Bella.’
EPILOGUE
‘SO MUCH for taking things slowly.’
Staring down at the perfect features of her newborn daughter, who had arrived two weeks early, Bella could scarcely comprehend that they hadn’t even been together a full nine months yet, that so very much had happened in such a short time.
The Pill, as Bella had found out, was not really designed for a trainee detective who hit the sink to brush her teeth at any given time of the day, night shifts, extended stake-outs and a love life turned up full blast, not exactly conducive to the rather narrow window of time the Pill required to be effective.
‘She was worth the wait,’ Heath teased lightly, more than happy to escape the thrum of Emergency downstairs and take the lift to the fourth floor maternity ward to take an extended afternoon coffee-break. Climbing up on the hospital bed beside her, he joined Bella in an indulgent gaze at their pre
cious baby, wrapped in a gorgeous bunny rug covered in swirling bright red and orange patterns with not a hint of pastel in sight. ‘Where did this come from?’
‘Lucy left it when she went back to Ireland. She left two actually. There was a gorgeous turquoise one in case it was a boy.’
Heath gave a slightly startled look. ‘Well, thank heavens it wasn’t, then!’ Wrapping an arm around her shoulder and pulling her in for a cuddle, he rested back on the pillow beside her. ‘You miss her, don’t you?’
‘I guess,’ Bella admitted. Lucy had been a tower of strength when Bella had found out she was pregnant, completely sympathetic to Bella’s constant nausea and more than happy to terrify her with stories of Marnie’s incredibly colourful birth! ‘I mean, I’m happy she’s well and home, but I kind of liked having her around.’
‘You’ll see her again. It’s not as if she’s on…’ He laughed at his own faux pas. ‘OK, she is on the other side of the world. But I’m sure she’ll come back to Australia for a holiday.’
‘As if her insurance company’s ever going to let her leave the country again.’
‘I guess,’ Heath admitted, kissing the top of her head and then resting back on the pillow again. She could feel the exhaustion emanating from him, knew, even though he didn’t complain once, work had been exceptionally busy these past few days, not to mention the thirty-six hours without sleep he’d endured, holding her hand during a labour that definitely couldn’t be described as short and sweet!
But despite the tiredness, despite the understandable weary edge, Bella knew there was something else on his mind. Knew that even though he was here, even though he’d said all the right things and was holding her as close as he could, she could feel a shiver of distance between them. Something was going on that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, a niggling feeling that he was holding something back.
‘Is everything OK, Heath?’
‘Everything’s great,’ Heath answered. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’
‘You tell me,’ Bella answered, eyes narrowing slightly as she looked over at him. ‘Come on, Heath, I know there’s something on your mind.’
‘That’ll teach me to marry a detective,’ Heath mumbled. ‘Look, it’s nothing, Bella, nothing for you to worry about at all.’
‘Then tell me,’ Bella insisted. ‘Heath, I’ve had a baby, for goodness’ sake, not a brain transplant. You can talk to me about things other than bunny rugs and teddy bears, you know!’
‘OK,’ Heath conceded, his voice deliberately light, yet he was completely unable to meet her eyes. ‘You know how Jackie came in with the kids last night?’
Bella nodded, unsure where this was leading. Jackie had brought the children in to meet their new stepsister and Bella had managed to survive the event without even a twinge of jealousy.
OK, maybe a twinge, when she’d caught Jackie giving Heath a slightly pensive smile over the new baby’s crib, but Bella had put it down to the fact that her milk was due to come in and she was feeling a bit emotional. She felt completely secure in what she and Heath shared, and that confidence gave her the strength to push on further, to ask the man she loved what was really on his mind.
‘Jackie rang just before. Lily’s teacher called her in after school. Apparently she had been in tears during show and tell. Lily had got up to tell everyone about her new sister and suddenly changed her mind and started to cry.’ He gave a small shrug. ‘I don’t know, maybe she’s just tired, maybe it was just all a bit too much to take in.’
‘Heath,’ Bella said softly. ‘Why does Jackie think she’s upset?’
His eyes still couldn’t meet hers. Instead, he stared at the incredibly long but tiny fingers of his daughter wrapped around his.
‘Tell me,’ Bella pushed gently.
‘OK,’ Heath nodded, taking a deep breath before finally voicing what was on his mind. ‘She’s worried that she’s not my little princess any more—that’s what I always call her. Apparently, she told Jackie that she was hoping the new baby would be a boy so that Max would be pushed out of the spotlight instead of her!’
‘Oh, the poor little thing,’ Bella wailed, catching Heath’s surprised look. ‘You didn’t think that would upset me surely? You didn’t thing that I was going to be jealous of a little girl!’
‘I didn’t know what to think,’ Heath admitted. ‘You’ve just had a baby, it’s an emotional time…’
‘She’s your daughter, Heath. If she’s upset then so are you. I’d expect exactly the same for…’
‘Her?’ Heath finished. ‘We really need to give her a name, you know.’
‘I know.’ Chewing her bottom lip, Bella stared down at her daughter. ‘But there are just so many to choose from. It has to be right.’
‘We can’t keep calling her her.’ He watched as Bella fingered the bunny rug beneath her fingers, a smile edging his lips as he read her mind.
‘I’ve always liked the name Lucy!’ He felt the tiny inward drag as she held her breath, decided there and then that if ever he fancied a career change maybe he could be a detective as well, but perhaps it was only Bella he could read like a book. ‘Of course, it would go to the other Lucy’s head, she’d insist we named her after the other Lucy because somehow she’d got us together.’
‘She would, too.’ Bella smiled.
‘How about it?’ Heath whispered. ‘Lucy Jameson.’
‘Lucy Jameson,’ Bella confirmed, closing her eyes against the soft peach of her baby’s cheek, saying the new name over and over.
‘And given that it’s only right that she meet her famous namesake, maybe we should think about heading over there for our honeymoon. We never did manage to squeeze one in.’
‘How will you get the time off?’
‘Well, Sav Ramirez managed to swing three months in Spain when his baby was due and, given I’m a fully fledged consultant now, I’d say that I’ve got a pretty good case.’
‘You mean it?’
‘Of course,’ Heath said easily, always able to put a smile on her face, always prepared to give more than he even attempted to take. And Bella knew it was her turn to be the grown-up now, her turn to make life just a little bit better, a little bit easier for the man she really loved.
Not because she had to, but because she wanted to.
‘Ring Jackie,’ she suggested softly. ‘Tell her you’ll take the kids out for tea tonight. You should take them somewhere nice, where you can spoil them both rotten and make them feel really special.’
‘I can’t.’ Heath shook his head immediately. ‘Bella, she’s only three days old. I can hardly leave you on your own at visiting time.’
‘I won’t be on my own,’ Bella corrected him. ‘I’ve got half the station coming in on their way to the pub to wet the baby’s head and you know how much you hate it when all we talk is shop. Go, Heath,’ she said firmly. ‘Please.’
Unlike nine months earlier, she wasn’t closing the door on him but opening it a little further, letting this wonderful, caring man do what he really needed to, safe in the knowledge that he’d always be coming back to her.
‘You’re sure?’ Heath checked. ‘It will mean the world to them.’
‘Then do it,’ Bella said, her voice calm with certainty, knowing this was the right thing to do. It was easy to share happiness around when your heart was already full to bursting.
‘You can give me a ring when you get home, or perhaps see if you can swing it with the midwives to arrange an after-hours visit.’
‘Lucy and I will be right here, waiting.’
ISBN: 978-1-4603-5827-6
UNDERCOVER AT CITY HOSPITAL
First North American Publication 2005
Copyright © 2005 by The SAL Marinelli Family Trust
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Undercover at City Hospital Page 14