She’d looked at him as if he were a stranger. Less than a stranger. She’d looked at him with pure horror showing as plain as day on her features. He didn’t expect anything less, of course, especially given the setting of their reunion. Harry knew that must have been brutal, and it was all down to him. He wished he could have told her that, that he was sorry she’d seen him there. Another Annabel conversation to torture himself with. Great. As if he didn’t have enough of those already. Heading to the huts representing the numerous hire car companies, he steeled himself. London, Harrison Carter is coming home. I hope you’re ready for this one.
* * *
Annabel drove the ambulance back into the station. They’d finished on time for once, and she and Tom were eager to get on with the rest of their day. Well, Tom was looking forward to a hot shower and a cold drink in a fancy wine bar with Lloyd. Annabel was looking forward to catching up on paperwork before picking Aidan up from his friend Finn’s house. They’d had coding club after school, and then Finn’s mum, Teri, was taking them out for tea. Teri was a nurse and the two single women had soon worked out that since their boys were such good friends, they could trade off on the childcare from time to time. It worked out brilliantly, and they got on great at work too. It made the two women’s lives that much easier, and they always had each other’s backs at work too.
Annabel frowned to herself when she thought of picking Aidan up from hers that night. How many lies she would have to tell—how much she would have to conceal about her day. Suddenly thankful for the list of jobs that needed her attention, she started to grab her things and head indoors to her office. Being the lead paramedic was great; it was what she had planned for her career for so long, and the bump in money was pretty nice too. Since things with Harry and moving to Dubai had fallen apart, taking the job she’d been offered at her old hospital—but had turned down in favour of Dubai—had made perfect sense.
Abe, Harry’s dad, had held her together for the first few weeks, when she couldn’t bear to go straight back to her flat with her tail between her legs to stare at four walls and wail. Thank goodness she’d not sold it before the planned move, or she would have been homeless to boot. Abe had even called the hospital, let the others know what had happened, and that she was tragically single and available for work. Dumped at the airport. She’d rocked up, cases in hand at Heathrow, and instead she had been dumped.
I’m going alone. It’s not you, it’s me. It would never work out there. Smell you later.
Everyone knew she’d got dumped by Harry and left to rot in her old life. Not that she saw it that way now. Things happened for a reason, and she knew that better than most. What had happened after, having Aidan, had kept her hands pretty full. She loved her job, had friends, a new home. She had been doing just fine, or she thought she had till she’d looked at Harry again. Felt the pull of him right in the pit of her stomach, just as strongly as before. Now she was back to feeling tired and wanting to hide away.
Heading into the ambulance station, she nodded to a few of the staff and motioned towards her office with a smile and a nod when they offered her some supper. She knew she probably should eat something, but she also knew that she’d only end up ordering pizza once Aidan was asleep in bed. She’d have the energy for little else.
Wading through her inbox, she noticed a new staff member form. Of course—Tom’s replacement. They’d do a handover, and Tom would be gone. Off to pastures new, baby vomit and lack of sleep. If anyone could handle that, it was Tom. She was thrilled for both of them and couldn’t wait to meet the new arrivals. Even if the little ones, not yet born, were the reason that she was losing the best work partner she’d ever had. Well, the second best. The pair of them were on standby, adoption process all done. They were just waiting for the call that the mother had delivered and they were parents.
She pulled out the staff form and laughed to herself softly. She was seeing things now. Imagining her ex’s name in the square marked ‘Employee Name’.
Rubbing at her tired eyes, she looked again. Blinked a half dozen times. It wasn’t an optical illusion. A Mr Harrison Abraham Carter was due to start as her partner the very next day.
The words swam in front of her eyes as she slotted the pieces together. HR had hired a new paramedic, and they’d told her that he was a previous employee. She’d never connected the dots. She’d never ever imagined that Harrison would even be in the UK, let alone in their neck of the woods. She’d stayed hands off, not wanting to seem pushy to the new girls in HR. They chose well normally; she had a crack team. Damn it. She realised that there was no option now. He’d forced her hand. She needed to speak to Harry after all. She couldn’t let the dawn rise without at least a conversation. And what a conversation that was going to be.
Taking a moment to close the office door, she looked around first to see if she might be interrupted. She needed this to go well, with no distractions. Satisfied, she sat back down at her desk, took out her phone and looked for the number in her contacts. One she had called only once in the last few years, and never thought to be calling again. Not in her right mind, anyway.
Harry answered on the second ring, denying her any real opportunity to steel herself.
‘Hello,’ he said softly. She could hear the surprise in his voice. ‘I’m so glad you called.’
‘Hi,’ she said shakily. ‘It was you at the airport today then. I wasn’t sure I hadn’t had a small stroke and imagined the whole thing.’
He laughed, just once. ‘Yeah, it was me. I’m sorry it happened that way. I wanted to speak to you properly, but I know it wasn’t the best timing. How’s Frank?’
She rolled her eyes, biting the skin on the inside of her mouth at her own stupid remark. To his credit, he didn’t say anything else for a beat.
‘It wasn’t the best surprise,’ she offered. ‘He’s fine. He got discharged.’
‘That’s good to hear. I didn’t know you would be there though, truly. I was planning on telling you I was back in a better way.’
So he wasn’t denying it then, or trying to play it down. He was telling the truth at least. Still, the job news was still ringing in her head. She needed to get control of this, get out in front of it. Before she clapped eyes on him again. There would be no running tomorrow. That was his forte, not hers. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her squirm.
‘Well, I would have guessed, given that you’re due to start at the station tomorrow.’
Another pause.
He’s wriggling like a worm on a hook.
She felt mean for thinking it, but she had feelings. Who knew? She was having all the feelings and being tired and exhausted after work wasn’t helping. She needed to get this out. She needed to get off the phone, because even listening to his voice right now was too much. It was so much easier to pretend that she was over him when he wasn’t around. Having him around was torture.
‘It doesn’t matter anyway. We worked together before. I suppose we can again.’
‘I—’ he started to cut in, but she couldn’t let him. She’d lose the opportunity.
‘Let me finish. When you left, I was in a bit of a state. Nice job, by the way. Waiting till the airport to tell me. Just lovely, really.’
She heard Harry suck in a sharp breath, and she kept talking.
‘Five weeks after, I found out I was pregnant. I’d been on a few nights out with Tom and Lloyd, some of the nurses. I told them I’d had a one-night stand and—’
‘You slept with someone straight after I left?’ His voice was louder now, a tinge of anger running through his words. ‘Is that what you’re telling me? You got pregnant?’
‘Shut up, please! No, I haven’t slept with...anyone since you.’
Damn it. Don’t talk about that.
‘Not that it’s any business of yours what I did after you left, but the baby was yours, Harrison.’
‘Mine?’ he echoed, his voice softer now.
‘Yes. Is yours, in fact. My son, Aidan. He’s seven, he lives with me. People think he was the result of a one-night stand because I told them that’s what happened, but he’s yours.’
She sighed heavily, sitting back in her chair. She felt lighter, light-headed even. She’d spoken her truth. The only other person she’d told wasn’t here to tell her story. Her mother had taken that secret well, but telling a headstone was different from a living person. They couldn’t give an opinion, for one thing. She figured the people around her had their suspicions, but she’d always shut them down. It was too hard to even think about Harry, let alone have people pitying her for choosing to have the child of the man who’d left her in the dust. Or telling him that she was having his baby. He’d ignored her calls, every one of them, and she hadn’t called to tell him the baby news. Why should she? He’d gone and blocked them all.
She didn’t want to co-parent a child with someone who lived in another country. She’d never had a dad, and she didn’t want Aidan to grow up with a part-time dad. She’d protected her son. You couldn’t miss what you’d never had, she figured. Though it was getting harder now Aidan was getting older. The questions had already started with gusto, and it was just easier to continue with her story. That his dad was someone she didn’t have any contact with, that they didn’t need him in their lives.
At the other end of the phone there was a resounding silence. She could hear him breathe, so she carried on.
‘I just needed you to know, since you will probably meet him at work, or someone will say something, or mention him, so...that’s it. That’s why I called. Just so you had the facts.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
She closed her eyes, listening to the hurt in his voice.
‘What was I supposed to do, Harry, call you up and tell you? You left, remember? I tried for weeks to get you to talk to me. I called your work. They said you were unavailable; they wouldn’t even tell me anything about you. What was I supposed to do, ship him off every once in a while to Dubai to a man he didn’t know? I didn’t even know if you would want to be his father. For all I knew, you had a wife and kids out there. You chose to leave, and I didn’t want him not to have his father. I’ve had that myself, and it’s not a nice feeling. Better no father than one who doesn’t show up for his kid. We’ve done okay this far on our own. If you’d called me back, just once, I would have told you. But you didn’t, Harry, and I made peace with it.’
Another lie, she told herself. It was only her pride that had stopped her calling when Aidan was born, and Lord knows she had wanted to. Giving birth without him had felt so wrong. Every time Aidan had done something amazing she’d wanted to pick up the phone. When he took his first steps, said his first word. Dada. Oh, how she had cried at that. Her gorgeous, perfect little boy saying that word had broken her heart all over again. By then it had been too hard to call him. What could she say? Our secret son said his first word today?
‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t attacking you. It’s just...a lot. I didn’t expect this. We need to meet.’
Annabel was already shaking her head, before she remembered he couldn’t see her. Thank goodness he couldn’t, because she had silent tears rolling down her face and her hands were shaking.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said finally. ‘I don’t want to see you, Harry. You had your chance.’
* * *
Harry was sitting outside his father’s house, the hum of the hire car’s engine ringing in his ears. He was a father. A father. To a boy already half grown, no less.
A dad was something he had never thought he would be. Or could be. When he’d found a lump on his testicle a few weeks before Dubai, he’d known that the signs were bad. He’d been so tired lately, his health not what it was. He knew it was more than the intensity of the job, the stress of the planned move, and this was it—testicular cancer. When he’d burned his life back home to the ground and headed out to Dubai, determined to kick the cancer before getting Annabel back, he’d woken up that first morning in his new life with another lump to obsess over.
His new bosses had been amazing. He’d called to tell them he couldn’t take the job, what he was facing, and they’d not only protected his job, they’d told him to come anyway and be treated at their world class centre. The second lump was more bad news, and it had taken the best expertise of the team he was supposed to be working with to keep him alive, and it had cost him his fertility.
The cancer was the reason he’d left Annabel behind. He’d seen what a toll her mother’s cancer had taken on her and he couldn’t bear the thought of her being his carer, all alone in a new country without her friends, nursing him with a cancer that the oncology department at the hospital in London didn’t seem too optimistic about. He knew enough to know that the emergency scans they had done weren’t good. He’d had a choice: stay home with a father who he didn’t get on with, or go to his new life and fight to stay alive.
He’d been scared, but Annabel had been the deciding factor. He couldn’t put her through that. He was Harrison Carter, strong, self-assured, always the first to run to a call. He didn’t want Annabel to see him sick, or worse. She had been offered a job at the ambulance station where they’d trained. She was top of the class. She had a life to step into and he didn’t want to ruin that for her. She’d wanted this her whole life and she was so close to getting it.
So he’d broken her heart, told her it wasn’t working out, that he wanted to travel to Dubai on his own, and he’d left her there. Walking through the security gate, listening to her sob and call his name as he strode away from her. He didn’t even look back, because he didn’t want her to see his own tears.
As time had gone on and he’d found out he couldn’t have children, going home had seemed an impossibility. What could he offer her, after all? What if the cancer came back, or she wanted children? He didn’t want to derail her life all over again, so once more he’d chosen to protect her heart over his. Right then and there he knew he wouldn’t go back to London. He couldn’t get the all-clear and rock up at home with a ring. Not when it would only ever be the two of them. He knew that Annabel wanted children. They both did; they’d spoken of it often. An abstract vision for the future that they’d always assumed they would be able to fulfil when the time was right. Working abroad, saving up and seeing the world, then returning home to buy the house they’d always liked as kids and raising their little family.
Knowing that he would be returning home after so long with only the promise of the two of them together, he knew it wouldn’t be fair. He’d broken her heart once and he didn’t want to do it again. She could be happy with someone else, have the family she’d always wanted. He would just be a footnote in the story of her life. A bad, abandoning ex-boyfriend.
But now he knew that he should have come back all along. He should have flown home and fought harder. He was such a coward and look what it had cost them both. He’d ruined both their lives, and their son had been caught in the crossfire. Life was cruel but, thinking about Annabel’s news, all he could feel was happiness right now. He had a child with the love of his life. That was something he’d never imagined post cancer. Hearing that he’d left her pregnant was just too cruel a twist of fate to comprehend right now. He felt as if the universe was laughing at him.
‘I get why you don’t want to meet, but I have so many questions,’ he said eventually, his throat feeling dry. ‘Does he know about me?’
Annabel winced, stuttering a little. ‘No. I told him I’d just met his father the once. The same as I told everyone.’
Harry could feel the shock wash over him, his nerve-endings tingling. ‘You didn’t tell anyone the truth? I can’t believe it.’
‘No, and I don’t need your judgement. You’d just left, you weren’t talking to any of us. I made up a story. People were mad enough at you, and I couldn�
�t bear their judgement. I get that you’re mad but—’
‘No. Well, yes, I am, but...thank you.’
‘Thank you? What the hell for?’
He closed his eyes in frustration. ‘I just mean...thank you. I know that sounds stupid but thank you. I don’t deserve it, any of it. I’m so sorry I didn’t call. I’m sorry I put you in that position.’
‘I did it for me,’ Annabel said coldly. ‘And Aidan. I didn’t want him to know about you, that you left us both without a backward glance. You coming back has forced my hand.’
‘I know, but I don’t want to hurt you or him. That’s the last thing I want. Listen, can I meet him? I’d like to meet him. I’m just outside Dad’s at the minute, but—’
Abe... He had another conversation or twenty coming then. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to push. I just—How is he? How did you manage...?’ His voice trailed off. ‘Are you with anyone?’
She huffed out a breath. ‘Since I admitted I hadn’t slept with anyone since you left me for dust, barefoot and pregnant, I guess I don’t need to answer that. Meeting Aidan is another matter. I’ll need to think on it. I have to think about him. He’s gone through a lot recently.’
She sounded angry, guarded, and he couldn’t blame her. He wanted to reply but he was too busy trying to get his size ten foot out of his mouth. He needed the next words to be clear, and to come out right.
‘Annabel, I didn’t mean it like that. I guess I’m just adjusting. I do have things to tell you though, a lot of things. Can we meet—just us, I mean? Without Aidan.’ Just hearing him saying his name felt weird. ‘Aidan.’ He said it again. ‘I like his name.’
‘I don’t think we should. Listen, you’re working with me tomorrow; we’ll have a lot to get through.’ Harry heard a beep on the line, and Annabel spoke again. ‘I have to go, I have another call. It’s Aidan, I’m due to pick him up from his friend’s house. I should go.’
Falling for the Brooding Doc Page 19