‘Completely positive.’ He nodded. ‘Her arm will have to stay in plaster for about six weeks and her face will be sore for quite a while, but apart from that she’s fine.’
The mother let out a muffled sob. ‘I’ve told her time and time again to watch what she’s doing when she’s crossing the road, but the minute she’s out of my sight…It’s in one ear and straight out the other.’
‘Kids, eh, Doctor?’ Louise’s father exclaimed, trying for a laugh that didn’t come off. ‘You think you’ve got it sussed when you get them past the baby stage—that you can finally start to relax—but the minute they learn to walk…Well, I don’t have to tell you about it, Doctor. The nurse told us you’re a father yourself.’
Yes, he was a father, he thought with a jagged twist of pain as he left the waiting room, or at least he had been until three weeks ago. Until he’d discovered that Nicole wasn’t his.
Why had Donna done this to him? She must have realised she wouldn’t get away with it. She must have known he would find out eventually, so why had she told him he had a daughter, allowed him to grow to love her, knowing that one day the rug would be pulled out from under his feet?
Had she hated him so much that she’d wanted to get back at him, or was it simply that there’d been so many men in her life that she didn’t actually know who Nicole’s father was?
‘Everything OK, Elliot?’ Floella asked curiously as she passed him.
Desperately he swallowed the bitter tears clogging his throat, and nodded. All right? No, nothing was ever going to be ‘all right’ ever again.
And he’d have to tell Jane, he realised, seeing her coming out of cubicle 7. She’d have to know eventually, but what would she say? Would she insist he must track down this mystery man, that Nicole’s real father had the right to be given the opportunity to make contact with her if he wanted?
No!
The word was wrenched from somewhere deep inside him.
The man had no rights. OK, so his sperm had created Nicole, given her life, but he wasn’t her father. He hadn’t been there for the bad times as well as the good. He hadn’t hugged her, and dried her tears, and made sure she went to bed at a reasonable hour whether she wanted to or not.
He wouldn’t tell Jane. He wouldn’t tell anyone. Nicole was his. He couldn’t give her up. He couldn’t.
‘Is Elliot OK?’ Floella frowned as Jane joined her by the whiteboard to check on the name and details of her next patient. ‘Nicole hasn’t had a relapse, has she?’
Jane shook her head. ‘She’s doing really well. In fact, the medical reg reckons if she keeps on progressing like this we might be able to take her home at the end of next week.’
‘Home?’ Floella repeated, her eyes fixed on her thoughtfully. ‘You consider Elliot’s flat your home now, do you?’
A faint tinge of colour crept across Jane’s cheeks. ‘No, of course I don’t—’
‘Then why haven’t you moved back into your own flat while Nicole is in hospital? I mean, there’s no reason for you to be staying there at the moment, is there?’
There wasn’t, Jane thought in dismay, and she should have thought of that if she hadn’t wanted to set every tongue in the hospital wagging.
‘I thought…I mean, Elliot and I decided…’ What possible reason could she give that Floella would accept? ‘The thing is, Flo—’
‘The thing is that you and Elliot are living together,’ the staff nurse sighed. ‘And I mean living together.’
Jane blushed scarlet. ‘Flo—’
‘Look, I’m not going to blab it all over the hospital if that’s what you’re frightened of. All I want to know is, are you happy? Are you sure this is right for you?’
Unconsciously Jane’s lips curved into a tender smile. ‘Oh, yes. Yes, I’m sure.’
And she was sure. More sure than she’d ever been about anything in her life. Just to look up from the breakfast table and find Elliot’s eyes upon her, so warm and unbelievably gentle. Just to have him hold her in his bed at night, not even making love. It was right, so right.
‘You’ve really got it bad, haven’t you?’ Floella said dryly, watching her. ‘Well, all I can say is good luck to you.’
‘You mean, you’re not going to tell me I’m a fool, that I’ll live to regret it?’ Jane asked, but to her surprise Floella shook her head.
‘You know his track record as well as I do, but if you think it’s going to work, that Elliot’s ready to settle down now, then, like I said, good luck to you.’
Luck didn’t come into it, Jane decided. Elliot loved her. OK, so maybe he hadn’t told her that yet, but he did—she just knew that he did—and she loved him, and nothing and no one was ever going to change that.
Not even Elliot himself when he spent the rest of their shift behaving like the original bear with a sore head.
‘Boy, but is he a little ray of sunshine today.’ Richard grimaced after he’d received the sharp edge of Elliot’s tongue for the third time that day. ‘Any idea what’s wrong?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Jane replied, groaning inwardly as she heard the wail in the distance of what sounded like the imminent arrival of more than one ambulance. ‘All I know for certain is that any thought we might have had of getting away on time tonight has just flown out the window.’
She was right. There’d been a multiple pile-up on one of the roads leading into London and every A and E unit in the city had to take its share of the casualties.
‘I wouldn’t want your job for all the tea in China, Sister,’ one of the road traffic policemen said, watching her as she dashed from casualty to casualty, assessing their level of priority.
‘I suppose it’s one way of keeping fit,’ she said with a grin, but she didn’t feel much like laughing by the time they’d treated all of the casualties who’d been brought in.
‘What was the final count at the finish?’ Charlie asked wearily when they finally managed to make their way to the staffroom. ‘Three DOAs, five to Theatre with suspected abdominal injuries and four fractures?’
‘Three fractures,’ Floella corrected him. ‘We can’t really count that fourth guy.’
Charlie frowned. ‘But he was involved in the accident, wasn’t he?’
‘Only indirectly. The little ghoul was trying to take photographs of the scene when he fell down the embankment.’
‘If I’d known that, he could have hopped his way back out again,’ Elliot said grimly. ‘Lord, but I’m bushed. What’s the time?’
‘Would you believe it’s only half past six?’ Jane smiled. ‘Some people would consider that a reasonable time to be finishing work.’
‘So would I if I hadn’t been on duty for twelve hours,’ he groaned. ‘OK, folks, let’s hit the road. I, for one, just want to go home and put my feet up. Are you coming, Jane?’
She nodded, but as he reached for his coat Kelly suddenly let out an apologetic gasp. ‘I’m sorry, Elliot, but I’ve just remembered something. You had a personal phone call earlier this afternoon, but I’m afraid it completely slipped my mind.’
‘Tell me about it tomorrow,’ he said dismissively, walking towards the door. ‘Phone calls—personal or otherwise—are the least of my priorities at the moment. What I want is a hot bath, a—’
‘But it was your sister-in-law.’
He stopped dead, and Jane saw his shoulders stiffen. ‘My sister-in-law?’
‘Your ex, I suppose I ought to have said.’ Kelly smiled. ‘Mrs Michelle Bouvier. She wanted to talk to you but you were busy with that young girl who’d fractured her arm.’
‘I remember,’ he said, and as he turned to face the student nurse Jane saw that his face had gone quite white. ‘What did she want ?’
‘She said she was in London for a few days and would like to come to see you and Nicole. I told her about Nicole’s accident, and what ward she was in—’
‘You told her what ward Nicole was in?’ Elliot exclaimed, his face suddenly taut with fury, his eyes
blazing.
‘She asked me, and I didn’t think it was a secret,’ Kelly faltered. ‘She said she would probably come in and visit her today around six o’clock. I’m sorry—I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. I mean, she’s Nicole’s aunt—’
‘Of course you didn’t do anything wrong,’ Jane said soothingly, shooting daggers at Elliot. The student nurse was on the brink of tears and she would have been pretty near the edge herself if Elliot had been glowering at her the way he was glowering at Kelly. ‘Mrs Bouvier has a perfect right to know which ward her niece is in.’
‘Like hell she has!’ Elliot exploded the minute the student nurse hurried away, white-faced and still tearful, and the rest of the staff had followed, throwing puzzled glances at Jane. ‘Who the hell does she think she is—swanning back from Peru, or Iran, or wherever she’s been, and demanding to see my daughter?’
‘Elliot, this is ridiculous,’ Jane protested. ‘Michelle is Nicole’s aunt, so it’s only natural she would want to see her, especially as she’s been in an accident. It’s called family feeling.’
‘Is it?’
‘Of course it is! Elliot, this isn’t like you,’ she continued in confusion, seeing his expression. ‘I know Donna hurt you very badly but, no matter what you might think of her, Michelle is the last direct link your daughter has with her mother, and I think you should be encouraging that link, not attempting to put up stupid and irrational barriers against it.’
He could see the disapproval and bewilderment in her eyes, but how to tell her he was frightened? Frightened that Donna might have told Michelle that Nicole wasn’t his. Had she come to take her away from him, arguing she had more rights to the child than he did? And she did have more rights. She was Donna’s sister, Nicole’s aunt. He…He was nothing.
‘Elliot…’ The disapproval on Jane’s face had turned to real concern. ‘Elliot, what’s wrong?’
It was the irony of the situation, he thought bleakly. The supreme, unutterable irony. He’d never wanted Nicole, would quite happily have palmed her off on Michelle a mere two months ago, but now…
His eyes caught sight of the treatment-room clock. It was a quarter to seven. Michelle would be there, in the medical ward, and swiftly he walked to the staffroom door.
‘Where are you going?’ Jane demanded.
‘You said I ought to see Michelle,’ he said grimly. ‘Well, that’s what I’m going to do!’
He’d liked Michelle the first time they’d met, Elliot remembered. He’d found her entertaining and witty, funny and kind. She hadn’t changed a bit, and Nicole clearly liked her a lot, but now he discovered he didn’t like her at all.
‘Your daughter is quite charming, Elliot,’ Michelle said as he and Jane led the way out of the medical ward, leaving Nicole surrounded by all the toys her aunt had brought her from Iran.
His daughter. He let out the breath he’d been holding from the minute he’d stepped into the medical ward, and sent up a silent prayer of thanks. She didn’t know. Donna hadn’t told her, and she didn’t know.
‘I confess it gave me quite a start to see how very like Donna she’s become,’ Michelle continued. ‘My husband and I generally spent around six to eight months of every year on archaeological digs, you see,’ she continued as Jane gazed at her in surprise, ‘so I only ever saw Nicole occasionally, and it’s amazing the difference six months can make to a child’s appearance.’
‘It is,’ Jane agreed, heartily wishing Elliot would at least try to contribute to the conversation, instead of making it all too obvious that he wanted to leave. ‘I’m sorry about your sister’s death—’
‘We were never very close,’ Michelle interrupted, clearly seeing Jane’s embarrassment. ‘She had her world, and I had mine.’
‘Quite,’ Elliot declared tightly. ‘And now if you’ll excuse us, Michelle—’
‘Elliot, I really would like to talk to you about Nicole,’ she interrupted. ‘Unfortunately I’m only going to be in London for a few days—Raoul is addressing an archaeological seminar in Paris on Thursday—so I wondered if I might come round to your flat later this evening—’
‘It’s been a long day, and I’m very tired, Michelle.’
‘I appreciate that.’ She nodded. ‘It is not an easy job, being a doctor. In fact, I don’t know how you manage to take care of Nicole—’
‘I manage.’
The words were clipped, cold, and Michelle coloured.
Jane would have hit him if she’d been in Michelle’s shoes.
OK, so his marriage to Donna had ended acrimoniously, but that didn’t give him the right to be quite so unbelievably rude to her sister. She’d come with the very best of intentions, and a person would have had to be blind not to have noticed the way her eyes had stayed fixed on her niece throughout her visit, wistful and a little sad.
‘Look, why don’t you come round to the flat with us now?’ she said quickly, and received a look from Elliot that would have killed. ‘I’m afraid I can’t promise you French cuisine, but it will give you and Elliot the opportunity to talk.’
‘Oh, that would be lovely.’ Michelle beamed. ‘Thank you—thank you very much indeed.’
Jane didn’t get any thanks from Elliot when they got back home. In fact, once Michelle was safely installed in the sitting room and Jane had gone into the kitchen to find something for them all to eat, he let fly with a number of comments about interfering women, and people taking too much upon themselves, which were no less effective from being hissed in an acid undertone in case Michelle should hear him.
‘Elliot, I don’t give a damn whether you’re upset by the fact that I invited her or not,’ Jane retorted as she slammed some meat into the microwave and took some ice cream out of the freezer. ‘She didn’t have to come all this way to see Nicole.’
‘I don’t know why she did.’
‘I do,’ she retorted. ‘She came because she’s clearly a very nice woman. She came because she wanted to see the only link she has left with her sister, and I’d have thought the very least you could have done was to be pleasant, and polite, and welcoming for one evening!’
She didn’t know whether he took her comments to heart or not. He was certainly less rude over dinner, but it wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination a comfortable meal, and when it was finally over Jane got to her feet with relief.
‘Why don’t you both go through to the sitting room while I make some coffee?’ she suggested.
‘That would be very nice.’ Michelle smiled, but Elliot, Jane noticed, didn’t.
In fact, clear panic appeared in his eyes, but there was no way she was going to come to his rescue by suggesting he might like to help her with the coffee. Michelle had said she wanted to talk to him, and he was damn well going to talk to her whether he wanted to or not.
It wasn’t the talking that bothered him, Elliot thought grimly when he obediently took Michelle through to the sitting room, it was what his ex-sister-in-law wanted to talk about. Something told him he wasn’t going to like it, and it didn’t take him long to discover that he’d been right.
‘You’ve done a wonderful job with Nicole,’ Michelle declared as soon as she sat down. ‘Better than anyone could have expected in the circumstances.’
‘I’m glad you think so,’ he replied warily, knowing there was a ‘but’ to come, and there was.
‘When the news finally reached me in Iran of Donna’s death, I’m afraid it didn’t come as any great surprise,’ Michelle sighed. ‘She always lived life in the fast lane, and a car crash…There was a certain inevitability about it. What did surprise me, however, was hearing she had entrusted Nicole into your care.’
‘She is my daughter—’
‘A daughter you knew nothing about until two months ago,’ Michelle interrupted gently. ‘A daughter who must have turned your life upside down.’
‘She’s made it livelier, certainly,’ Elliot admitted, ‘and I don’t know how I would have managed without Jane—’
/> ‘Exactly,’ Michelle said. ‘You’re a doctor, never knowing from one day to the next what emergency might come up, which is why Raoul and I have a suggestion to make. We’d like to take Nicole, give her a home.’
‘No—no way!’
‘Elliot, it makes sense,’ Michelle insisted. ‘It can’t be easy for you, trying to juggle your work with taking care of a child.’
‘It wouldn’t be easy for you either,’ he said. ‘You and Raoul spend more than half of each year in the back of beyond. What would you do with Nicole then? Put her in a boarding school? No, Michelle, the answer’s no.’
‘Of course we wouldn’t put her in a boarding school,’ she protested. ‘We’d take her with us. We could engage a tutor—’
‘But—’
‘Elliot, we’ve no children of our own—I can’t have any,’ Michelle said, her eyes fixed on him, large, pleading. ‘We would love her, give her a good home. I know you’re her father, but you’re a single man, and as a single man you can’t possibly give her the love and attention Raoul and I could.’
‘Michelle—’
‘She needs a mother, Elliot, and you’re not asking me to believe that when you first heard of Nicole’s existence you didn’t wish there was somewhere else she could go rather than to you. Somewhere you knew she’d be loved and well taken care of.’
He had, but that had been then, this was now.
‘It is very kind of you to be concerned about my daughter’s welfare,’ he said tightly as the sitting-room door opened and Jane came in, carrying a tray of coffee and biscuits, ‘but there’s no need for you to be. Yes, I’m a single man at the moment, but not for much longer.’
‘You’re getting married?’ Michelle said faintly. ‘To whom?’
Well, there was only logical answer to that. Only one woman in the world he would ever want to marry. ‘To Jane, of course. Jane and I are getting married.’
‘I see,’ Michelle murmured, disappointment plain in her voice. ‘Then I suppose congratulations are in order—to both of you.’
Elliot smiled, and if Jane looked completely stunned he wasn’t surprised. He had rather sprung it on her.
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