by Amy Andrews
‘I’m sure you’ll figure out a way.’
Miranda felt at a complete loss. She was trying to be strong. Trying to do the right thing. And, as always, she needed her grandmother’s support. ‘Nan, please...’
Dot patted her hand. ‘It’s okay, pet. I know it’s not been easy for you and dating Patrick wouldn’t make it any more so. All I’m saying is...don’t shut yourself off to the possibilities. Promise me that?’
Miranda looked into the wrinkled face so sure and gentle and wished she was small again and could curl up on her grandmother’s lap. She nodded because she didn’t want eighty-year-old Dot to worry. ‘Okay. I promise.’
But it wasn’t one she could keep.
* * *
Patrick slid the laryngoscope down along the tongue of his sedated patient and applied pressure to the handle to angle his patient’s jaw open. The light source shone down into the larynx and reflected off two white vocal cords.
Keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the cords, he held out his hand and said, ‘Tube.’ He hadn’t even finished the word and the requested item was in his hand. He slid it down the side of the scope and pushed it through the cords, into the trachea.
‘I’m in,’ he said.
Fingers that he knew were painted fairy-floss pink beneath the gloves held the tube in place as he withdrew the scope and passed him a ten ml syringe. He murmured his thanks as he filled it with air and connected it to the side port, pushing in a few mls to inflate the distal cuff, anchoring it in the trachea.
Next she connected a rebreathing bag to the tube and passed it to him before efficiently tying some white tracheotomy tape around the tube and fastening it securely behind the patient’s neck. He consulted the monitor, fiddled with some dials on the anaesthetic machine.
Satisfied everything was in order, Patrick pulled up his mask, which had been half on, securing the top ties before saying, ‘Let’s go.’
Miranda secured her mask in the same fashion then pulled up the gurney side she’d been working from and released the brakes with a flick of her foot. She and Patrick manoeuvred it through the swing doors into operating theatre five.
Two orderlies took it from there, hefting the anaesthetised thirty-eight-year-old man about to undergo a splenectomy across to the narrow operating table. Miranda transferred the used laryngoscope and a tray of drawn-up and labelled drugs from the gurney to the stainless-steel top of the anaesthetic machine at the head of the table. Patrick removed his patient from the bag and connected him to tubing that would automatically take care of the patient’s breathing for the duration of the surgery.
‘Back shortly,’ she said.
Miranda’s hand shook as she pushed through the swing doors back into the anaesthetic room. The whole process from intubation to transfer to the table had taken less than ten minutes and even fewer words, with only the steady blip of the sats monitor to break the tension between them.
This week had been hard. Worse than the awkwardness from the beginning because then it had been as a result of what had happened between them physically. This week it had been about what had happened between them emotionally.
A much harder beast to ignore.
She knew they’d get through it, find a way to work together as time went by, but for now it wasn’t so easy and avoiding him as much as possible seemed the simplest way out.
* * *
Miranda hurried to the staffroom at midday, quickly scoffing her sandwiches and cup of tea before Patrick arrived. Much to Edna’s delight, she’d volunteered to spend time in the storeroom, putting away sterilised stock in the lull between morning and afternoon lists.
She’d volunteered ostensibly to familiarise herself with where every last instrument, scope, drug and suture lived but mostly to stay out of Patrick’s way.
Patrick entered the staffroom as Miranda was leaving. ‘Oh, hey,’ he said as their bodies brushed lightly and his belly tightened. ‘Ruby’s nagging me about the sleepover. Should we arrange something for this weekend?’
He frowned as she barely broke stride, tossing, ‘Okay sure, text me,’ over her shoulder as she scurried away. He watched as her baggy scrubs moved with her rapid retreat and in ten seconds flat she’d disappeared into the storeroom.
Again.
She seemed to be spending an awful lot of time there lately.
A bunch of frustrated emotions churned in his gut and swirled in his head and he shook it to clear them as he strode into the room. Lilly greeted him as he reached the coffee machine and he chatted away for a while, sitting down with some of the nurses and joining in a conversation about some awful reality television show he hadn’t subjected himself to yet.
Slowly other staff trickled in but he barely noticed. He didn’t want to be here, talking to them. Any of them. He wanted to be wherever Miranda was, trying to talk some sense into her. Or at least trying to get things back on a more even footing since the date debacle.
Screw it.
He stood and excused himself, relieved to see that amidst the lively debate no one gave his departure a moment’s thought as the rowdy conversation followed him out of the door. He needed to talk to her. About the sleepover, if nothing else. And if that meant cornering her in the storeroom then so be it. They couldn’t go on like this indefinitely. They were colleagues. Their daughters were best friends.
He spotted her in the first compactor as soon as he entered the room. She was standing on tiptoe, struggling to shelve a large tray of instruments wrapped in the familiar blue disposable fabric that indicated their sterility.
‘Allow me,’ he said, advancing towards her and whisking it out of her hands before she could protest. He was aware of how close they were in the narrow space between the compactors as he reached over her head easily and placed the ENT tray on the shelf with the other ENT packs.
Miranda swallowed, her nose practically pressing into the V of his scrub top as he lifted his arms and loomed over her. She caught a whiff of the intoxicating cologne he wore and she came so close to licking him she had to take a hasty step backwards. He smelled like he had that night in the lift and that was the last thing she needed to remember, caught as she was again with him in an enclosed space.
‘Thanks,’ she said, her voice small.
Patrick dropped his arms. ‘No worries.’ He noticed how her eyes couldn’t quite meet his and for the first time since they’d met, with her hair tucked under her cap and enveloped in her enormous scrubs, she actually looked her age.
Which made him feel so much better. Not.
‘Miranda. We need to talk.’
‘Yes. About the girls.’ Miranda had never been so grateful for an alternative topic of conversation in her life. She shuffled her feet. Looked at a point beyond his head. ‘Well, either Friday or Saturday would suit me. We’ll just work in with you and Helen.’
Patrick didn’t say anything, just waited and watched, refusing to look away. Refusing to pretend there weren’t more important things to talk about than a play date between their girls. Sooner or later she was going to have to look at him.
Miranda’s pulse tripped as the silence stretched. She stole a glance and her breath hitched at the calm, knowing look in his autumnal eyes and she couldn’t look away.
Pleased he had her attention, he shook his head with deliberate slowness. ‘Not about the girls.’
Miranda swallowed. There wasn’t enough air or space around her as her heart raced and her brain buzzed as if she’d drunk too many glasses of wine too fast on an empty stomach. His scent and his presence morphed into a dangerous sexual cocktail.
‘Us, Miranda. You and me.’
‘Patrick...’
Her voice was faint, not her own, as everything shrank down to him and his lovely olive face and big broad shoulders and his wicked, sexy mouth and how very much she wanted t
o kiss him. And it didn’t matter that they were at work, that they shouldn’t, that this whole thing was crazy with a capital C.
His mouth was right there and he was staring at hers like it was a banquet and he was starving.
Unable to control his impulses for another moment, Patrick lifted his hand, stroked a finger down her cheek, ran a thumb over her mouth, and if she hadn’t whimpered, he might just have been able to keep himself in check, but when that little desperate gurgly mew escaped, his pulse roared through his head and he was a goner.
‘Damn it,’ he muttered, before swooping down, smothering the short space between them in sex and lust and primal pounding need. Sliding his hand onto her cheek, her lips opened to the demand of his. He didn’t know who moaned first but he know he moaned loudest as his body demanded her total submission, flaying her mouth with a bruising kiss that pushed her against the compactor, rolling it back and back and back, taking her with it, and him following until they could go no further, and still he didn’t let her up for air.
His free hand raked down her body, slid under her scrub top, sought and found a breast, and she gasped into his mouth, pushing her fullness deep into his palm.
But it was another gasp that finally, finally broke the sexual trance and they tore apart, breathing hard as they became aware they had an audience.
‘Lilly,’ Miranda said rather unnecessarily as she grappled to pull everything into place and pretend that they hadn’t been caught making out like teenagers in the storeroom.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Lilly said, backing away. ‘Sorry...’
Miranda had one of those crazy thoughts as Lilly fled that she’d never seen the brash nurse, who lived for shock value, so gobsmacked. But it got lost in the teeming alternate reality that had taken up residence in her head.
‘I don’t suppose,’ Patrick said as he too tried to pull his raging hormones back under control, ‘there’s any chance she’s going to keep that to herself?’
Patrick had stopped wearing his wedding ring a few weeks back, something Lilly had quizzed him about quite closely, and she’d seemed satisfied with his vague workplace health and safety replies. But they weren’t going to cut it now.
Miranda shook her head. ‘None.’
He looked at her. He supposed he should be panicking but somehow he didn’t care. ‘Looks like we’ve been outed. You have to come on a date with me now. Make an honest man of me.’
Miranda didn’t know whether she should laugh or cry but it felt good to know that Patrick wasn’t freaking out.
In fact, neither was she.
Because Dot was right. After that kiss she shouldn’t be shutting herself off to the possibilities.
‘Okay,’ she said, still a little breathless, but when he smiled she smiled back and it had never felt so good to be this crazy.
CHAPTER SIX
PATRICK WAS RUNNING late. Very late. He was supposed to be picking Miranda up for their date in five minutes but he was still in his scrubs and there were a couple of patients yet to check on before he left for the night. He stripped off his theatre garb and got dressed in his suit from that morning. As he left the change rooms and headed to ICU he quickly dialled Miranda’s number.
She picked up on the second ring.
‘Is this where you tell me you’re running late and I have to decide whether you’re really running late or it’s some deep psychological statement about the wisdom of what we’re doing?’
Patrick smiled at the laughter in her voice. ‘Nothing deep about it. The list ran over—that’s it. I’m sorry but I’ll be another hour by the time I do a round and go home, change and come back for you.’
‘Why don’t I just meet you at your place and we can go to the restaurant from there? It’ll save some time and Ruby will already be in bed.’
Patrick hesitated. It would save time. Miranda’s place was in the opposite direction from the restaurant he’d booked. If she came to his place that would put them at the restaurant in an hour. It wasn’t exactly what he’d planned for their first date. ‘Are you sure? You’ve already picked up Lola from my place earlier today.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It makes sense.’
‘Okay. Meet me there in about forty-five minutes?’
‘Sure... Looking forward to it.’
Patrick was wearing a goofy grin as he pushed through the swing doors that lead to ICU.
* * *
‘Did you say you were going on a date?’
Patrick steeled himself for the conversation as he undid the top two buttons of his shirt and decided to go without a tie. He looked up to where his mother-in-law stood in his bedroom doorway. ‘Yes,’ he said gently.
Helen didn’t say anything for a moment and then managed a subdued, ‘Oh.’
Patrick sighed. ‘I like her, Helen. A lot.’
She nodded. ‘You’re married, Patrick.’
‘Yes.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘I’ve been thinking it’s time I did something about that.’
Helen blinked. ‘A divorce?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see.’
‘Helen...she’s never coming back.’ He knew Katie’s mother had never stopped hoping. ‘And even if she did...’
‘Even if she did?’ she prompted.
Patrick checked his watch. Miranda was going to be here in ten minutes—he didn’t have time for this now but it had provided him the opening he’d been looking for to discuss the issue with Helen.
‘Do you really think we could just pick up where we left off?’ he asked, his voice soft. This had been hard on Helen too. She’d been as much a victim as he had.
‘I know this has been difficult and you deserve to be happy, Patrick. You know that I think what Katie did was wrong and incredibly unfair to you and Ruby. But divorce...it’s so final.’
‘I know,’ he acknowledged.
‘I understand you wanting to move on, to be happy, but I guess...the fact that you two were still married gave me hope that Katie might still come home. That the door was still open for her. I suppose I just can’t stop hoping that she will. So another woman...it’s like the end of hope, you know? It’s just going to take a little adjusting to.’
‘I know you’ve always thought deep down that she’d come back and we’d be a family again, and I’ve never wanted to squash that. God...if Ruby ever left without saying goodbye...’
Patrick strolled towards her as he spoke. Helen had been his rock and he owed her a lot. Any change in his life was going to affect her and he needed her to know that she didn’t have to feel threatened.
‘I never planned this...’ God knew, he’d fought against it. ‘After this mess with Katie I never thought I’d be interested in a relationship again.’ He held out his arms and gathered her against his chest for a gentle hug. ‘I don’t know where this is going, Helen, but I want to find out.’
He felt her head nod against his chest. ‘Of course. I know. I’m being silly. Just ignore me.’
He let her go. ‘No, you’re being a mum. A parent. We hope. That’s what we do. I understand.’
Helen smiled but he swore he could see the shimmer of tears in her eyes. ‘Just...be careful, okay? Don’t rush in.’
‘I promise.’ He smiled, even though he didn’t feel like it. He was sick of being careful, of being cautious. He wanted to rush in and immerse himself in the newness of it all but he’d done that with Katie and look where he was now.
A knock on the door interrupted them and Patrick grimaced. ‘Can you get that? Tell her I’ll be five minutes.’
He didn’t wait for Helen to answer as he headed back into his bedroom. He needed to clean his teeth, put some shoes on, grab a jacket.
He felt like a teenager on his first date. His nerves tightened and butterflies danced
in his stomach.
It felt good.
* * *
‘Hi.’ Miranda greeted Helen warmly when she opened the door. She’d been surprised earlier that day when she’d picked Lola up that Patrick’s live-in help had been an older woman, but Helen had been charming and Ruby obviously adored her.
Helen gave her a stiff nod and a cool smile as she told her to come in. ‘Everything okay?’ Miranda frowned.
Another nod. ‘Patrick will be out shortly. Go through to the lounge.’
Miranda did as she was asked, turning to thank Helen one more time for picking up Lola from prep yesterday and putting up with her high-spirited daughter overnight, but the older woman was nowhere to be seen. Miranda’s forehead crinkled at the odd reception but she let it pass as she walked around the lounge, inspecting the photos of Ruby and Patrick smiling at her from multiple frames scattered around the room.
A minute later a wolf whistle interrupted her inspection. She turned to see Patrick lounging in the archway. ‘Sexy.’ He smiled, looking her up and down.
Miranda grinned even as her pulse leapt at his frank perusal. She wasn’t wearing anything particularly spectacular. Just a very basic red dress that she wore to most things that required some kind of effort. It was sleeveless with a modest round neckline. A slim belt at her waist cinched it in and the straightish skirt loosely followed the line of her hips and thighs. Some mascara and hoop earrings were her only adornment.
But beneath his scrutiny she felt like she was wearing a string bikini. ‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ she returned, desperate to deflect attention from her scrunching nipples, which would be plainly evident to him if he kept staring at her like that.
‘What...’ he grinned looking down at his attire ‘...this old thing?’
Miranda laughed. He looked a hundred kinds of sexy with his shirt open to reveal the long, tanned column of his neck and the shadow of his three-day growth.
‘Ready?’ he asked.
She nodded as she walked towards him and when he held out his hand to her she hesitated only briefly before taking it. ‘Let’s go,’ he murmured, and her breath hitched as his warmth enveloped her and her heart skipped a beat.