‘A daughter.’
‘Then at least you have something to remember her by,’ Adam replied.
Oh, he did, Elliot thought sadly, but not in the way the whole world would ever imagine.
‘Are you married yourself?’ he asked, anxious to change the subject.
‘Married, and divorced, too, I’m afraid,’ Adam replied ruefully. ‘Bit of a disaster, actually. Brought it all on myself, of course. Never home, working all the hours God sent, trying to get ahead in my job. And the wife…she felt neglected, found someone else.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It happens. I see my kids occasionally, but it’s not the same. If you don’t live with them, become just an occasional visitor, they move on, leave you behind.’
‘I guess so,’ Elliot murmured.
‘Hold on to your kid,’ Adam continued. ‘Hold on to her, and if there’s a girl in your life, hold on to her, too. I’ve learned the hard way that career, wealth, position, don’t amount to anything if you haven’t got a family to share it with.’
‘He’s got a point,’ Charlie observed after Elliot had waved Adam goodbye with promises to keep in touch which they both knew would never be kept. ‘In fact, it seems to me that you should have everything in your life now that any man could ever want. A lovely daughter, a girl like Jane.’
‘Charlie—’
‘She is a wonderful girl, you know,’ the SHO continued doggedly. ‘I don’t think you could do better.’
‘I’m sure you mean well, Charlie,’ Elliot declared evenly, ‘but my private life isn’t really any of your business.’
He began to walk away but the SHO came after him. ‘You’re right, it isn’t any of my business, but it seems to me that a man who’s made a girl fall in love with him and then dumped her—’
‘I haven’t dumped her!’
‘A man who’s made a girl like Jane fall in love with him, and then dumped her—’
‘Charlie, I haven’t dumped her!’
‘Is some kind of louse. I just wanted you to know that,’ the SHO declared, ‘and to let you know that I, for one, don’t like it. I don’t like it at all!’
And he swung round on his heel and walked away, leaving Elliot gazing after him, not knowing whether he wanted to laugh or go after the SHO and hit him.
Neither, he decided, as he saw Jane smiling at something Floella had said, a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, a smile that was a little wary and sad. He would do neither.
He would get her back, prove to her that he loved her, refuse to take no for an answer.
And what about Nicole? his mind whispered. Are you going to tell Jane that she’s not yours?
One problem at a time, he told himself, noticing from the treatment-room clock that their shift was over. Tackle one problem at a time.
But his first problem was getting out of the door.
‘Elliot, could I have a word?’ Richard asked, waylaying him.
‘Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow?’ Elliot replied, seeing Floella and Jane walk past him and out into the corridor, clearly making for the staffroom. ‘I’m a little busy.’
‘If I don’t say this now I never will,’ the junior doctor said firmly, then took a deep breath. ‘Elliot, I know you’re my boss, and I’m probably speaking out of turn here, but it’s about Jane.’
‘Why am I not surprised?’ Elliot groaned. ‘Go on, then, get it over with,’ he continued as the junior doctor coloured. ‘Tell me I’m the biggest louse of all time.’
‘Well, frankly, I think you are, but that’s not what I wanted to say to you,’ Richard said determinedly. ‘I just wanted to put you straight about something in case…well, in case you’d got hold of the wrong end of the stick. You might remember that I came round to your flat and Jane and I spent the whole evening in her bedroom.’
‘Richard, could you please get to the point?’ Elliot asked. ‘Like I said, I’m in a hurry tonight.’ And if I’m not fast, Jane will have left and another opportunity will have slipped through my fingers. ‘Say what you want to say, and get it over with.’
To his frustration the junior doctor took another deep breath. ‘I wanted you to know that nothing untoward occurred between Jane and me that night. I was feeling a bit down, and Jane volunteered to cheer me up, to listen to my moans and groans.’
‘Is that it?’ Elliot demanded. ‘Is that the end of your revelations?’
Richard flushed scarlet. ‘I just thought you should know. I couldn’t have lived with myself if it was my fault—my being there that night—you dumped her.’
Elliot opened his mouth, closed it again, struggled with his temper and eventually managed a small, tight smile.
‘Thank you for sharing that with me, Richard, and now, if there’s nothing else?’ The junior doctor shook his head. ‘Good. Then I’ll bid you a very good night.’
And before the junior doctor could reply Elliot was off and running through the treatment-room doors, down the corridor and into the staffroom.
‘Where’s the fire?’ Jane couldn’t help but laugh as he all but fell in the door, red-cheeked and breathless.
‘I wanted to talk to you.’
Her laughter died in an instant, and she pulled on her coat and reached for her bag. ‘I’m sorry, but anything you want to say to me will have to wait until tomorrow. I’m off duty now, and all I want to do is go home.’
‘Jane, it’s important—’
‘So is the shopping I have to do before I can go home,’ she replied, walking to the door.
‘Jane, it’s about Nicole.’ That stopped her in her tracks as he’d known it would.
‘What about Nicole? I saw her this afternoon and she seemed fine.’
‘She is fine,’ he reassured her, hating himself for worrying her unnecessarily, but desperate situations called for desperate measures. ‘Jane, I need to ask you a favour.’
She stiffened immediately. ‘If you’re going to ask me to move back in with you until your mother comes home—’
‘No, I’m not going to ask you that,’ he interrupted. ‘It wouldn’t be fair.’
Like it had been really fair of him to allow her to fall in love with him, to let her believe that he loved her, too?
But she didn’t say that. Instead, she said, ‘What’s this favour, then?’
‘To talk to you about Nicole. To see if together we can come up with some plausible reason for you not being there when she gets home.’
‘Elliot—’
‘Jane, she loves you—you know she does—and she’s going to be heartbroken if you just disappear out of her life without a word of explanation.’
She stared at him for a long moment. He looked tired, weary, and surely those deep creases on his forehead hadn’t been there two weeks ago?
‘OK. All right.’
She put down her bag and began taking off her coat, but he shook his head.
‘I thought maybe we could talk at the flat. Jane, anyone could walk in while we’re talking,’ he continued quickly as she opened her mouth, clearly intending to protest. ‘And I really think our private lives should remain just that, don’t you?’
No need to tell her that all of A and E seemed to know that they had been lovers. No need to reveal that the only thing left private about their relationship was why it had ended.
‘Jane, please,’ he continued when she said nothing. ‘For half an hour, that’s all.’
He held his breath as she thought about that, then to his relief she nodded. ‘OK. For half an hour.’
It was strange to be back, Jane thought as Elliot ushered her into the sitting room. Strange and familiar at the same time. The seat where she’d always sat in the evening, the coffee-table she and Nicole had played Scrabble on. It had only been two weeks, and yet it felt like a lifetime.
‘Would you like a coffee—tea—something stronger?’ he asked awkward, eager.
‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’
‘It would be no trouble
.’
‘Coffee, then.’ She managed a smile. ‘Thank you.’
‘I won’t be a minute,’ he said heartily, too heartily. ‘Take a seat, make yourself comfortable.’
She couldn’t. There were too many memories associated with this room. Nicole like a little white ghost on that first night. Nicole laughing and giggling as her father tickled her. Michelle Bouvier…
She slipped off her coat, and couldn’t prevent a wry smile from curving her lips as she looked around for somewhere to put it. A little over two months ago her heart had sunk when she’d first seen Elliot’s home, so pristine, so elegant, so intimidating. Now there were toys on practically every seat, books left lying where they’d been dropped.
‘I didn’t tidy anything away,’ he murmured, clearly reading her thoughts as he came back into the sitting room. ‘I thought…if I did that it would be as though I was accepting she was never coming back. I kept the hairbrush you left in the bathroom for the same reason.’
She turned from him quickly, unable to bear the naked plea she could see in his eyes. God knows how much she loved this man, would never love anyone else the way she loved him, but she mustn’t let him see it or he’d use it, use her again.
‘Nicole…You said you wanted to talk about Nicole.’
‘Aren’t you going to sit down?’ he said softly.
She did. It helped a little. Made her feel less shaky, less vulnerable, more in control.
‘About Nicole,’ she began firmly, taking the cup of coffee from his outstretched hand. ‘I think it would be simpler if we just told her I had to go away on a nursing course.’
He sat down, planted his elbows on his knees and fixed his eyes on her face. ‘And when you don’t come back after two weeks, what, then?’
‘She’ll be with your mother in Hampshire.’
‘I’m not sending her to my mother,’ he said. ‘I’m keeping her with me.’
‘But how will you manage?’ she gasped. ‘When you work nights, the weekends?’
‘I’ll get a nanny—a succession of nannies if need be—but she’s staying in London with me.’
He watched her take this in, digest it.
‘Then if she’s going to be staying with you,’ she replied, ‘all I can suggest is you tell her I’ve been looking for a place of my own for a while, and that I’ve found one.’
‘She’ll be hurt—upset.’
‘Elliot, no one ever said this was going to be easy.’
His eyes caught and held hers. ‘It could be, if you’d listen to sense, believe that I love you, and marry me.’
She got to her feet quickly and headed for the door. ‘I have to go.’
‘Jane, Nicole loves you very much, and I know that you love her—’
‘Elliot, don’t,’ she pleaded, whirling back to him, her eyes large pools of pain and distress. ‘Please, don’t. What you’re doing—it isn’t fair. Yes, I love your daughter, and I’m delighted—more than delighted—to see how much you care for her, but I can’t marry you simply to give your daughter a mother.’
Can’t, not won’t. Can’t meant there might yet be a chance for him, that she might love him as much as he loved her.
He took a jagged breath and stepped forward. ‘Jane, as God is my witness, I love you. Not as a mother for Nicole—’
‘I won’t listen to this,’ she cried, putting her hands over her ears. ‘I won’t let you do this to me. It’s blackmail! Working on my feelings, knowing how much I care for your daughter!’
He pulled her hands down and held on to them. ‘Jane—’
‘No! Elliot, your daughter is a wonderful girl, a lovely girl—’
‘And she isn’t mine.’
She stared at him open-mouthed for a second, then shook her head. ‘You’re not making any sense. Of course she’s yours. Donna—’
‘Lied,’ he interrupted harshly. ‘When Nicole had the accident, and we needed to do all those blood tests…She’s Donna’s daughter, Jane, but I’m not her father.’
She couldn’t take it in, couldn’t believe it. ‘But why would your wife lie? She must have known paternity could easily be established.’
‘I guess she never figured on an accident—the need for blood tests,’ he said, his face white, taut. ‘She probably hoped Nicole would be all grown up and married before anybody found out.’
‘But if you’re not Nicole’s father, then who…?’
‘God alone knows,’ he said grimly. ‘Perhaps he was some one-night stand whose name she couldn’t remember afterwards, or maybe she’d slept with so many men that month she didn’t have a clue.’
She shook her head, still dazed, still confused. ‘But why would she say she was yours?’
‘Perhaps she wanted to do one good thing in her life, knowing that if anything ever happened to her Nicole would have security.’ His mouth twisted bitterly. ‘Or perhaps she wasn’t that noble, and it was one last joke at my expense, dumping someone else’s kid on me.’
She wrenched her hands free from his angrily. ‘And is that how you feel? That Nicole was dumped on you?’
‘No! She’s my daughter, Jane. Mine. I don’t give a damn about blood groups, she’s mine.’
She stared up at him, frozen, stunned. He was crying. Cool, super-confident Elliot was crying, and she thought it was the most awful, heart-wrenching sound she had ever heard.
And suddenly she was crying, too, as hard as he was. Reaching for him, holding him tightly, trying to contain the sobs that racked his body.
‘Why didn’t you tell me? Oh, Elliot, why did you keep it to yourself? You should have told me, let me share it with you, let me help you!’
For a long time he couldn’t answer, simply clung to her while she smoothed his hair back from his forehead and kissed him and murmured words that she hoped might give him some comfort, ease some of his pain.
‘I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d try to persuade me to track down Nicole’s real father,’ he said shakily at last. ‘That you’d say it was the right thing to do.’
‘Never!’ she protested. ‘Elliot, you are her father, the man she loves. Her real father could be anybody. Somebody horrible, somebody she would hate.’
‘I couldn’t give her up, Jane, not now,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘Not now that I’ve grown to love her so much. She is my daughter, and always will be, even though we have no blood connection.’
‘I know,’ she whispered, holding on to him tightly, hot tears welling in her eyes again, only to feel dismay as he gently eased her away from him. ‘Elliot…?’
‘I know she will eventually have to be told the truth—when she’s older, a teenager—but I would like—I would very much hope—that we could both be there to tell her together.’
She wanted to say, yes, that she’d be there with him, but she couldn’t.
‘Elliot, I’m sorry—’
‘Jane, even if you won’t agree to marry me, even if all you’ll ever let me have of you is what I have now—a shoulder to cry on—and not your love, I will still love you. I will always love you.’
‘My love—you want my love?’ she said, wanting to believe him, desperately wanting to believe him.
‘Jane, I love you for the person you are, not because I want a mother for Nicole,’ he said raggedly. ‘I love you, and I love Nicole, and I don’t want to lose either of you. And if that’s selfish then, yes, I’m selfish, but I want both of you for the joy and happiness you’ve brought into my life.’
The tears in her eyes spilled over and down her cheeks. ‘Oh, Elliot—’
‘Jane, I love you so much that I’m trusting you with my future happiness. What I’ve just told you—you could use that knowledge, go to Michelle, tell her the truth, and that would mean I’d lose both of you. I’m putting all my future happiness in your hands.’
And he was, she realised, and it gave her the courage to say what she did.
‘Elliot Mathieson, I have loved you since the first moment I set eyes on y
ou.’
‘You have?’ he said, hope and uncertainty plain in his eyes.
She nodded.
‘Then you’ll marry me?’ he said eagerly. ‘You’re saying, yes?’
‘I’m saying yes, Elliot. I’m saying yes because I love you, and I love Nicole, and no matter what the future brings, we’re in this together.’
ISBN: 978-1-4603-5657-9
DR. MATHIESON’S DAUGHTER
First North American Publication 2001
Copyright © 2001 by Maggie Kingsley
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Dr Mathieson's Daughter Page 17