They took her and her mother to Riverside but once they had settled them in, and just as they were making up the stretcher, Victoria saw her father walking into the department.
He gave her a very cool look. ‘Victoria.’
She gave him a small nod back and let out a breath when he had passed.
‘Who’s that?’ Glen asked, but Victoria just gave a noncommittal shrug as if she wasn’t really sure who the man who had just passed was.
She wasn’t going to tell Glen that it was her father.
Glen chatted about his family all the time and, though it drove Victoria bonkers on occasion, she liked the glimpses of family life and was embarrassed by the state of her own.
They were just starting to think about lunch again when Dispatch asked if they could transfer a patient from Riverside’s children’s ward to the burns unit at Paddington’s.
The burns unit had been stretched to capacity by the fire but a bed had opened up and a very sweet little girl called Amber was, this morning, on her way to join the others at the Castle.
‘Hello, Amber,’ Victoria said when she met her.
She had a deep burn on her hand, arm and shoulder that was going to require grafting. Amber became teary when she saw the stretcher.
‘It’s no problem,’ Glen said. ‘We can take you to the ambulance in a wheelchair if you prefer.’
That seemed to cheer her up and so they fetched a wheelchair and the small problem was solved, but she became distressed again when she saw the ambulance. No doubt Amber was remembering the pain she had been in the last time, and remembered the fear of the lights and sirens.
‘I’m going to make you a chicken to keep you company,’ Glen said, and Victoria smiled as he pulled out a rubber glove and blew it up.
He was very good with the little children and knew how to amuse and distract them with antics, such as this one, and Victoria tended to leave that side of things to him.
Soon enough, Amber was holding her ‘chicken’ and seated in the ambulance, and the transfer went smoothly. As they made their way up to the burns ward she saw Dominic coming down the corridor and walking towards them.
He wasn’t in scrubs; he was in a suit and tie and, to Victoria’s mind, looked impossibly handsome.
Did she nod and say hi? Victoria wondered, but Dominic dealt with that—he nodded a greeting to them both and Victoria gave a brief smile back.
Glen was a bit cheeky. ‘Direct Admission,’ he said as they passed. ‘We’re taking her straight to the ward.’
‘That’s what I like to see,’ Dominic called back.
It was just a little dig, a small exchange, but hearing his voice and dry response made Victoria smile and feel a bit hot in the face.
The burns unit was busy but they made Amber very welcome.
‘Hello there.’ Matthew, the burns specialist, smiled to Amber as she was wheeled in. ‘I’m Matt.’
As Glen and Victoria wheeled Amber into her side room, Matthew had a brief chat with the girl’s mother but she soon joined them.
‘It’s good to be at the Castle,’ she admitted, clearly relieved and reassured to be at the famed hospital. ‘Amber, you’ve got a couple of friends here already.’
‘It’s just like being back at school.’ Victoria smiled.
Soon the little girl was settled and they could head off. It was incredibly warm on the burns unit as the temperature was kept high for the patients, but it made for hot work. Victoria would be very glad to get out of there, but first she had a small chat with Matt, who had spoken at the Save Paddington’s meeting.
‘Still being kept busy?’ Victoria asked.
He nodded. ‘I don’t think that’s going to change any time soon. I meant what I said about it being good that the fire happened so close to us. It made all the difference to some of these children. Did you bring in Simon?’
‘Simon?’ Victoria frowned and then shook her head.
‘The little boy from the foster home?’ Glen asked, because he knew about all the patients, and Matt nodded.
‘No, that was another crew. How’s he doing?’ Glen asked while Victoria was overheating.
‘I need a drink,’ she said, and left them to it. Glen would stand chatting for ages and it really was terribly warm in there.
The drinks machine wasn’t working but as they passed the canteen Glen nudged her.
‘We’ll get lunch,’ he said.
And she couldn’t really protest. There was no stretcher to take back to the vehicle and even if Dominic was in there Victoria knew that she couldn’t avoid him all the time.
She just rather hoped that he wasn’t there today.
‘What do you want?’ Glen asked, because they had their routine and usually Victoria would go and get a table while he went and got the food.
Except Dominic was there.
She had known the moment she stepped in, and though she deliberately didn’t look over, she was aware that he was seated in the far corner chatting with a woman.
She really didn’t want Dominic seeing her alone and coming over for another ‘discussion,’ or request to come to the scan.
‘Victoria?’ Glen checked, because she hadn’t answered his question.
‘I’m not sure what I want,’ Victoria said. ‘I’ll come with you.’
She chose a salad sandwich and bought a mug of hot chocolate and a bottle of water, as Glen chose tomato soup and a couple of rolls. Together they found a table, thankfully one far away from Dominic.
She drank half her water and then opened up her salad sandwich and took an unenthusiastic bite as Glen slurped his tomato soup.
‘Can I ask you something, Victoria?’
‘What?’ she snapped, awaiting the inevitable questions as to when she was going to tell work, or whether she had told the father.
Glen had asked both regularly since he’d found out.
‘Do you put butter on your peanut butter sandwiches?’
Victoria smiled. She liked their often mundane conversations and it helped take her mind off Dominic. ‘Of course I do.’
‘Well, Hayley doesn’t. And apparently Adam has asked that when it’s my turn to make the sandwiches, for me not to put any butter on.’
‘Adam’s nine?’ Victoria checked, and Glen nodded and took another slurp of his soup. ‘Well, then, I’d suggest he makes it himself if he’s going to be so choosy.’
‘You haven’t tried getting four children to school on time, have you?’ Glen sighed. ‘If they all made their own sandwiches, aside from the mess that they’d leave behind, they’d never get there.’
And she conceded, because no, she’d never had to get four little people to school before.
But hopefully in a few years she’d have one little person to get there.
The pregnancy was starting to take shape in Victoria’s mind and she was beginning to get excited at the prospect of being a mother.
She liked the glimpses of family life that Glen gave her.
It helped her to picture things a bit.
Glen made sandwiches for everyone if he was on an early shift. It gave Hayley a break and it worked well.
Except he’d left his behind today.
Victoria could no more imagine her father making lunch for her than a flight to the moon.
It just hadn’t happened.
And they hadn’t taken meals together, unless they were out at some function.
‘Have you told the guy he’s going to be a father yet?’ Glen asked, and Victoria sighed. She was just about to tell him to mind his own business when someone answered the question for her.
‘Yes, Glen, she has.’
And she stared at her half-eaten sandwich rather than at Dominic, who very calmly took a seat at their table.
‘Well, this is awkward,’ Victoria said.
‘Why is it awkward?’ Dominic asked. ‘All three of us already know you’re pregnant.’ He looked to Glen. ‘Did you know that the father was me?’
‘I had an idea that it might be,’ Glen admitted, and Victoria threw him an angry look as she realised that he had deliberately steered her into the canteen. Glen picked up his rolls and then stood. ‘I’ll see you back at the vehicle, Victoria.’
As he walked off Victoria looked over to Dominic. ‘I’ll be having words with Glen.’
‘I wouldn’t bother. I was coming by the station tonight to leave a message for you to contact me,’ Dominic said.
‘Why?’
‘Because we need to speak.’
‘About what?’
‘Well, Glen knows...’ Dominic started.
‘Glen guessed that I was pregnant,’ Victoria interrupted, assuming he was annoyed that others knew.
‘Victoria, I’m glad that he knows. It’s good that you’ve got him looking out for you. Mind you, he should have stopped you when there was that fire.’
‘Don’t interfere with my work,’ Victoria said. ‘He’s my partner, not my line manager. I make my own choices.’
‘Fair enough,’ Dominic said. He was trying and failing to treat her as he would a colleague. And trying to rationalise that he had every right to be concerned if she was carrying his child.
Only, it wasn’t the baby he had been thinking about on that day of the fire, because he hadn’t known she was pregnant then.
He had been loading a child into the ambulance and had turned at the sound of the explosion.
He had seen her rush forward towards the firefighter.
Glen had rushed forward too.
And he had seen the firefighters going into the burning building over and over, but it had been Victoria who he had wanted to go and haul back.
Dominic knew already that she wasn’t anything like the women he was usually attracted to.
And his response to her was like nothing he had known.
He had just watched her arrive in the canteen a little pink and flustered, though he had soon worked out why when he had watched her gulp down half a bottle of water—they had just come from the burns unit and boots and overalls would not have been the most comfortable things to be wearing.
And he had seen her and Glen, casually chatting as they selected their meals.
He was actually very glad that Glen knew.
‘I wasn’t going to broadcast the fact you were the father,’ Victoria added, ‘until the paperwork came in.’
‘Who else knows? What about family?’ he asked, worried that she had been dealing with this on her own.
‘I told my father.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘Not very much.’
‘Is he cross?’
‘Cross?’ Victoria checked.
‘Well, because you’re single?’
‘I don’t think he gives me enough thought to be cross. He was irritated. I asked if he could pull a few strings so that I could have the baby here at Paddington’s and he did.’ She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Actually, I just ran into him at Riverside.’ And she told him what she could not tell even to Glen.
‘We hardly even said hello to each other. We had words the other day.’
‘About the baby?’
‘Sort of.’ She gave an uncomfortable shrug.
‘I’ve spoken with your father on occasion,’ Dominic told her, and he watched as her eyelids briefly fluttered as he said without words that he got what an awful man he was. When she said nothing he moved the conversation on.
‘And your mother?’
‘She’s not on the scene. I’ve already told you that.’ Victoria took a long drink of her water but then chose to continue. ‘That was what my father and I had words about.’
His patience was pleasant; he waited as her eyes scanned his and she wrestled with how much to say. ‘He suggested that I think very carefully whether to go ahead with the pregnancy, and that he knew firsthand how difficult it was being a single parent.’ Her lips were pale and they clamped for a moment and his eyes still waited. ‘He didn’t really parent though,’ Victoria said.
‘Did you say that?’
‘No.’
‘So what did you say?’
Victoria flicked her eyes away and she gave a tight shrug. ‘Nothing.’
And at one-fifteen, in a busy hospital canteen, Dominic knew for certain that he was about to become a father. He knew that because Victoria had just lied.
Something far more had gone on when she’d had words with her father.
And if he could tell when she lied, then the rest was the truth.
‘I think,’ Victoria said, ‘that I’d better get used to the idea that the only person with any enthusiasm for this baby is me.’
And she looked over to him with an angry gaze while her heart waited for him to refute, to say, No, no, I’m thrilled, Victoria, but he just looked back at her with an expression that she could not read.
And then she amended that request from her heart for Dominic to placate her because she wouldn’t believe him anyway.
How could he be thrilled to find out that his one-night stand was expecting a baby?
Yet that was what he did—he thrilled.
There was such a pleasure to be had simply sitting here with him. There was such patience in his posture and a measured maturity to him.
Oh, what did he do to her? Victoria wondered, because she had forgotten to look away and still met his eyes.
There was an attraction between them that was so intense it was as if the rest of the people in the canteen had simply faded away.
‘Would you like to go out for dinner tonight?’ Dominic asked.
‘Dinner?’ She frowned. She had just stated that no one was very enthusiastic about the baby and he was asking her to bloody dinner. ‘What sort of a response is that?’
‘A very sensible one,’ Dominic said.
He would not lie; he would not feign delight just to appease. ‘A date,’ Dominic said.
‘No!’
‘Just dinner,’ he added, as if she hadn’t turned him down. ‘No talk of babies or DNA tests. We can see if we get on, see if we fancy each other.’
And she laughed.
It was such a moot point.
‘That’s the only thing we’ve got going for us,’ Victoria said.
He liked her assertion.
‘I think that’s quite a lot to be going on with,’ Dominic said. ‘For a first date at least.’
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS QUITE a lot to be going on with!
Victoria had never had this feeling while getting ready for a date.
As soon as her shift was over she raced out of the station and was then chased out by Glen because she’d forgotten to take her flowers.
From there Victoria made a mad dash to the shops where, shame on her, she bought some fresh linen for the bed.
In her defence, Victoria reasoned, she had been meaning to buy some for ages and it was on sale.
Yet, she was pushing it for time and there was one reason only that she was making sure that her bedroom was looking its best!
Yes, she hadn’t felt like this in for ever. In fact, it was the first time she had been truly excited to welcome someone into her home.
There was anticipation and a flutter of lovely nerves as she made up the bed, put her flowers into a vase and carried them through to the lounge. She put them on the window ledge and then headed back to the bedroom to choose what to wear. She chose her underwear carefully and then made a dash for the shower.
Dominic pulled up at the flat a
nd, when he buzzed and was let in, she was still in her dressing gown with wet hair.
‘Sorry, we got another call-out just as we were heading back to the station...’
Which was true, but she omitted to mention the mad dash to pretty up her flat.
‘It’s fine.’
‘I shan’t be long,’ Victoria said.
Her flat was tiny and really very lovely despite its very good view of trains.
It was, Dominic decided as he stood in the lounge, far more straightforward and homelier looking than its owner. There was a two-seater couch and a large chair, which was clearly her favourite, because there was a large ottoman and a pile of magazines beside it; the small shelf was crammed with paramedic procedure manuals.
It was neat but not as fastidiously so as he might have expected; it was very much a working girl’s flat.
There was a gorgeous arrangement of flowers in the window and Victoria smiled to herself when she returned to the lounge to find him surreptitiously trying to read the card.
‘They’re from Lewis’s parents,’ she told him. ‘The neck injury from Westbourne Grove.’
‘Good.’
‘I don’t have a secret admirer.’
‘No, you have a blatant one,’ he said. ‘You look beautiful.’
He made her feel just that.
Whether in boots and baggy green overalls with a messy bun, or dressed up, which tonight she was, he had always made her feel beautiful. This evening she had on a velvety, aubergine-coloured dress and black heels, and her hair was worn loose and down.
‘Where are we going?’ Victoria asked.
Bed, he wanted to say.
Bed, she hoped he would say.
Yet, there was so much that needed to be sorted first and it would possibly be easier to do that with a table between them.
‘There’s a nice French restaurant that I’ve heard about but have never been inclined to try,’ Dominic said.
‘That sounds lovely.’
Everything sounded lovely with his rich accent. He could have said they were going out for fish and chips and she’d have smiled.
She was putting in her diamond studs and she smiled as she saw him watching.
Their One Night Baby Page 8