Taking it All

Auteur

Sharon Kendrick

Lezers

19,3K

Hoofdstukken

Auteur

Sharon Kendrick

Lezers

19,3K

Hoofdstukken

💕 Romance 🩺 Doctors & Nurses 🏙️ Contemporary

Chapter 1

‘OK. NO, REALLY. No. It can’t be helped.’ Now, how the hell was he going to explain this to Harriet?

Jamie Brennan replaced the telephone receiver with a resigned sigh and turned to face his daughter, realising as he looked down at her that an explanation was going to be unnecessary in any case. Harriet might be only nine years old but she knew her father inside out!

Her face took on the belligerent expression that seemed to be growing more and more familiar these days. ‘You’re not going into the hospital again, are you, Daddy?’ she demanded querulously.

‘It’s a case of having to, Harriet,’ said Jamie ruefully. ‘I’d much rather stay here with you. You know that.’

‘But it’s Saturday! And you promised to take me swimming!’ Harriet accused hotly, disappointment making her rosebud mouth tremble with threatened tears.

Jamie shook his dark head. He needed to be firm on this one. ‘No, sweetheart, I didn’t actually promise. Daddy doesn’t make promises if he knows that he might not be able to keep them. What I actually said was that if it was quiet on the wards then we would go swimming. The trouble is that it’s been very busy. When a baby decides it’s time to enter the world it doesn’t give a monkey’s what time of the day or night it is!’

She didn’t respond to the joke but kept uncharacteristically silent. He looked at her bent head, at the strawberry-blonde hair plaited into two thick braids which made her took so appealingly old-fashioned and his heart contracted with love.

‘I’m sorry, sweetheart.’ He made a placatory move towards her but her skinny arm flailed him away and he recognised the gesture for what it was—defensiveness, rather than aggression. ‘Listen, Harriet,’ he explained patiently. ‘A woman has just been admitted to the labour ward. They need me there.’ He didn’t burden her with the fact that his senior registrar was away on holiday and that the new registrar didn’t seem to be shaping up as expected. Consequently, even more of the workload had fallen on Jamie’s shoulders than usual.

Harriet turned candid brown eyes up at him. ‘Why can’t one of the other doctors do it?’

‘Because I’m the consultant and ultimately I’m responsible for what goes on in my department,’ he replied slowly. ‘It’s a difficult case and I have to oversee what the registrar is doing. He’s still fairly new.’ But he could see that his appeal carried little weight—the cares of the obstetrics and gynaecological unit mattered little to a child who had already lost more than any child should ever be expected to lose. And Harriet Brennan had been just four years old when her mother had died...

‘But I wanted to go swimming!’ objected Harriet sulkily.

‘And so did I,’ said Jamie gently. ‘Very much. But you can still go swimming. Marianne can take you.’ He smiled. ‘And she’s a much better swimmer than me!’

‘I don’t want Marianne to take me!’ said Harriet, screwing up her nose. ‘I want you!’

Jamie did a rapid mental calculation. If the patient needed a drip to speed up her contractions, as he suspected she would, then that would give him a few hours’ grace while they watched to see if it worked. And, provided that there were no complications, then he could be out of the labour ward in time to take Harriet swimming. Just.

‘Tell you what,’ he said appeasingly. ‘If everything goes according to plan and everyone is happy then I’ll drive straight from the hospital to the swimming pool and meet you and Marianne there. But I’m not promising, sweetheart; things may crop up—you know how it is.’

Harriet pulled a face. She sure did. Like every doctor’s daughter in the world she had learned never to rely on Daddy being there.

‘OK?’ prompted Jamie and gave a grin which made him look much younger than his thirty-three years.

Harriet nodded, mollified. She adored her father and since the death of her mother was understandably closer to him than a lot of children of her age would have been. ‘OK,’ she grinned back.

‘Right!’ His domestic problems settled, Jamie automatically swung into his professional persona. ‘Marianne!’ he called, as he glanced quickly into the mirror to see if he was presentable enough to appear on the wards and then grimaced. He was most definitely not presentable!

He had been sawing through a diseased apple branch in the orchard and his face had smudges of dust adorning it, while his hair was completely rumpled. Add to that the dark shadows beneath his eyes, incurred from a difficult breech delivery he had had to do in the early hours, and he looked as though he had been up at a party all night. When was the last time he had been to a party—all night or otherwise? he wondered just a touch longingly.

He would need to wash up before he left for the hospital. ‘Marianne!’ he called again, as he pulled a comb from his back pocket and raked it through his thick, brown-black hair.

‘Coming!’ came the yelled reply and Marianne loped into the room with all the careless grace of an eighteen-year-old.

Jamie had had a tough job finding a nanny to suit Harriet and him. He had interviewed several young women in their early twenties—all extremely well qualified, it had to be admitted—but who all seemed to find the prospect of working for a youngish, successful widower doctor apparently irresistible. Jamie had never been what could have been described as a rake—he had married young and had loved his wife very much—but, even so, he could recognise a come-on when he saw one.

And the very idea of having someone looking after his daughter who made it patently clear that she was sexually attracted to him—well, frankly, it appalled him.

He was also human enough to admit to himself the potential for danger if he had a strapping blonde stunner living so closely with them! He was a man, not a robot, and he had not slept with a woman for a very long time. Not since his wife had died, in fact.

He gave a small self-deprecating smile as he realised how falsely noble this made him sound! Because there had been a woman that he had grown very fond of—the lovely Verity—but the relationship had never become sexual because Verity had still been in love with the father of her child. The experience had made Jamie wary and he had thrown himself into his work and his research and into being a good father and had pushed the thought of women to the back of his mind.

But lately...

Lately he had felt his senses clamour to be allowed to live again. So far he had repressed the desire but introducing a Junoesque Swede into his home, with legs all the way up to her armpits, was just asking for trouble!

As a kind of reaction to this, Jamie had then set about finding a kind and motherly figure to care for Harriet when he wasn’t around. He had been able to picture the applicant quite clearly—in his mind’s eye she always seemed to be wearing a floral pinny! He had had images of the scent of apple pie drifting in from the kitchen and clean washing billowing on the line, while Harriet would happily assist the matronly paragon to accomplish all these domestic chores!

It had been Harriet herself who had pointed out that the older women who were arriving for interviews were hardly likely to want to take her swimming, ice-skating or walking miles with Blue, her dog.

Jamie had had to agree with her and had just been getting desperate when the professor of medicine at Southbury Hospital had come to his rescue. He had a daughter aged eighteen, who was resitting her A levels. She was active, fun, adored children and needed a job before going up to university the following September. Jamie had met her the following day and had been convinced that she was just the kind of carer he was looking for for Harriet.

And he had been right. Marianne had fitted into Jamie’s and Harriet’s lives like a dream; she was more like an older sister to Harriet than a nanny. In fact, the year was almost up. In September Marianne would be off to Durham University, which left Jamie with only the summer holidays to find her replacement. He stifled a sigh, dreading the prospect.

What must it be like, he wondered fleetingly, to have the kind of normal family life that most couples took for granted? But he banished the thought with his usual resilience and humour.

He turned to Marianne with a smile. ‘How’s your crawl these days?’

Marianne, too, was a doctor’s daughter. She pulled a conspiratorial face at Harriet, then affected an expression of mock surprise. ‘Don’t tell me!’ she exclaimed dramatically. ‘Daddy can’t go swimming—he’s got to work!’

‘Yes!’ pouted Harriet.

‘Bet he’s fibbing,’ Marianne hissed, out of the side of her mouth. ‘He probably got Sister to bleep him as an excuse. He’s feeling too lazy and middle-aged to go swimming!’

‘Hey! Less of the “middle-aged”!’ protested Jamie with a grin. ‘I have to go in and oversee a delay in labour,’ he explained succinctly. ‘But, provided nothing else crops up, I’ll come straight to the pool. How’s that?’

‘Only if you promise to race us,’ challenged Marianne, with a wink at her young charge.

Jamie was as competitive as the next man. He also had the so-far-undisclosed memory of winning the county challenge cup for swimming. It might be time to show his daughter a glimpse of what her dad used to be like—before work and life had eaten up every waking hour! ‘Sure,’ he said innocently, ‘I’ll give you a race.’ Then he gave a deliberately worried frown and he had to bite his lip as he saw Marianne and Harriet exchange concerned glances.

‘Don’t worry—we’ll give you a head start,’ said Marianne kindly, and Jamie had to turn away to hide his smile as he headed off to wash his face and hands before driving to the hospital.

‘This is it!’ exclaimed the nurse cheerfully. ‘Bit small—but the view makes up for it!’

‘Thanks for showing me here,’ replied Sarah with a smile.

‘Don’t mention it!’ said the nurse cheerfully. ‘That’s what neighbours are for! I live just two doors down, if you’re interested.’

‘Thanks,’ said Sarah rather absently, depositing her battered suitcase on the floor of the small flat and raking a hand back through the abundance of dark hair that spilled over her shoulders. She didn’t even risk a look in the mirror! Talk about windswept!

At her farewell party at her old hospital last week Mick, one of the newly qualified doctors, had offered to drive her to Southbury on the back of his Harley-Davidson and Sarah, never one to refuse a challenge, had gaily accepted. It had been fun—intensely exhilarating but extremely heavy on the hairstyle—and she wasn’t sure if she had left her stomach behind somewhere on the motorway!

Eager to settle herself in, she had sent Mick off home with a quick peck on the cheek and had promised to invite him to any nurses’ parties at her new hospital.

Sarah glanced around the room quickly. It was small, she thought ruefully. But then she had been spoiled in the past, hadn’t she? This was the first nurses’ home she had ever stayed in. She had lived at home all the time during her nursing and then her midwifery training. And home was a palatial country pile with horses and stables and a swimming pool. A bit different to the cramped living space which was to be her home at Southbury Hospital.

Not for the first time she wondered if she had done the right thing to fly the nest and come here—to a hospital with a fine reputation, admittedly, but one where she knew absolutely no one!

But Sarah was by nature an optimist and she drew her shoulders back and strolled over to the window to see if the view was all it was cracked up to be.

And it was.

Stretching in front of her eyes for what seemed like miles, the city lay spread out before her. Like a sombre artist’s palette, the neat rooftops of the city were coloured in myriad greys and browns. And rising up from the symmetry to meet the cloudless blue of the sky was the most perfect architectural structure of all—Southbury Cathedral dominated the entire landscape with its beauty and elegance.

‘Wow!’ exclaimed Sarah happily, as she turned to smile at the nurse who had been standing and watching her. ‘You were certainly right about the view—it’s magnificent! What an amazing cathedral!’

She pushed back the heavy lock of dark hair that threatened to flop over her eye and glanced around the room, as if a little unsure of what to do next. And she was unsure, too! She had only been qualified as a midwife for just over two weeks! But her insecurity was gone in a flash—one thing Sarah Jackson had never been short on was confidence!

‘Do you want any help settling in?’ asked the nurse rather uncertainly.

Sarah shook her head. ‘No, thanks,’ she answered decisively. ‘I’ll unpack later. I think I’ll wander down to the maternity unit and have a nose around.’

The other nurse frowned in confusion. ‘But you’re not on duty until Monday, surely?’

‘True!’ agreed Sarah breezily. ‘But on Monday morning I’ll be thrown in at the deep end. What if it’s hellishly busy and a midwife or a doctor yells for something and I haven’t got a clue where to find it?’

The nurse shrugged. ‘They’d make allowances, of course.’

‘But why should they have to make allowances?’ queried Sarah reasonably. ‘When, with a little effort on my part, I can know the layout of the department before I actually start?’

The nurse who, although kind-hearted, had a limited imagination looked as shocked as if Sarah had just proposed streaking onto the unit in a pair of roller-skates! ‘But you aren’t authorised to go to the unit,’ she pointed out repressively, ‘until Monday morning.’

‘Rubbish!’ answered Sarah cheerfully, mentally crossing this particular nurse off her list of would-be new friends.

‘It’s not rubbish!’ replied the other girl a trifle heatedly. ‘It’s the rules!’

Sarah was the youngest of five children, spoilt rotten by her three sisters and beloved big brother, Benedict. And, much though they loved her, they would have been the first to point out that if Sarah had a fault it was that she tended to speak without thinking. Or, as Benedict always said, she engaged her foot before her mouth! ‘Rules are made to be broken!’ she declared rather passionately. ‘It’s Saturday morning—it shouldn’t be too busy! And, besides, I can be very unobtrusive,’ she fibbed outrageously. ‘I’ll just merge into the background.’

‘I’ll let you get on, then,’ said the nurse blandly. Merge into the background indeed! Looking like that? Life had been very boring at Southbury recently. Nothing much had happened since the new paediatric staff nurse had fallen madly in love with the elusive Dr Le Saux.

But things were looking up! The nurse almost rubbed her hands together in glee as she anticipated the fireworks in the maternity unit with the arrival of this outspoken new midwife!

Jamie gently removed his fingertips from the patient’s brachial pulse and stared down at her assessingly. She was exhausted—that much was clear. It was evident from her extreme pallor, the darkened smudges beneath her eyes and the way that her hair lay in limp, damp tendrils across her clammy brow.

He had seen her in his outpatients’ clinic just a few days earlier—a fit and healthy thirty-year-old who had been one of those lucky women who had seemed to sail through her pregnancy, taking it completely in her stride.

She was not so lucky now, he thought.

Mrs Markham opened her eyes and gave him a weak smile. ‘So, what’s the verdict, Doc?’

He admired the attempted joke but correctly read the terrible fear in the woman’s eyes. He never forgot that labour and childbirth were a mystery, often a terrifying one, to women who had never experienced it before.

He was also a doctor who never hid behind jargon or obscured the truth through well-meaning ‘kindness’. And Mrs Markham was an intelligent woman. Ignoring the half-disapproving look from the ward sister, he sat down on the edge of the bed.

‘Your labour isn’t proceeding as well as we would have hoped,’ he said slowly. ‘You have been in labour for almost twenty-four hours and as this is your first baby—’

‘You mean that as I’m a primigravida?’ corrected the patient crisply, and Jamie smiled.

‘Yes, I do. In a woman with a second or subsequent pregancy I would be reluctant to allow the labour to proceed past twelve hours. You’ve been given longer because first-time mums can be notoriously slow. However,’ he paused, speaking carefully so that his words would be understood, ‘your uterus is not contracting forcibly and rhythmically. The contractions are weak, irregular and intermittent. And although you are not unduly distressed by them you’re getting pretty tired.

‘I think you have a condition known as hypotonic inertia, probably, I suspect, because you have a large baby. But don’t look so alarmed. The fancy Latin name just means that there is a delay in your labour. There is no immediate threat to either you or your baby. What we will do is introduce a commonly used drug into your bloodstream. We’re going to try an oxytoxin infusion in an attempt to maintain regular contractions—’

Mrs Markham opened her eyes very wide. ‘And will that work?’

Some patients deliberately avoided asking questions as though if they acknowledged risk then the worst might happen. This woman was most emphatically not one of those. Jamie’s dazzling blue eyes were partially hidden by the outrageously thick lashes that framed them but he was totally oblivious to the impact that his looks had on women. Widowers had no time for vanity!

‘It may work,’ he told her honestly. ‘It isn’t always successful because although contractions occur they do not always succeed in dilating the cervix.’

‘And then what?’

‘Then a Caesarian section is necessary,’ said Jamie and, seeing the look of disappointment that had crumpled her features, gave her hand a comforting squeeze, his eyes questioning. In his experience it was always best to let patients voice their fears about any invasive procedure.

Mrs Markham shook her head, biting her lips to hold back the tears. ‘It doesn’t seem fair,’ she told him distractedly.

‘What doesn’t?’

She shook her head from side to side so that the damp, limp tendrils swayed around her white face. ‘You think it’s all going to be so easy! You go to all the childbirth classes and you do your breathing and your exercises religiously. They tell you how to avoid the use of drugs; how to have a baby the natural way. And now this.’ Her voice trembled with emotion.

‘I’ve already been sucking in gas and air like it was going out of fashion! I’ve been extremely tempted to have an injection of pethidine and now you’re going to infuse me with some kind of drug to speed up my contractions. And if that doesn’t work I’ll be bundled off down to Theatre to have my belly sliced open!’

Jamie heard Sister suck in a disapproving breath behind him as she listened to the patient’s rather florid description. Sister was of the old school—an excellent yet formidable midwife whose experience and confidence could calm down the most frightened of patients—but one, nevertheless, who believed that patients should just lie back and accept what the doctor or midwife told them without demur!

He smiled. ‘You paint a vivid and graphic picture of the Caesarean,’ he commented drily. ‘And while, like all surgical procedures, it carries with it an element of risk—’

‘Oh, it isn’t just that!’ blurted out Mrs Markham. ‘Fear comes into it, yes, but it’s just that I’m feeling so out of control!’

‘I know,’ said Jamie gently. ‘Believe me, I know. A great number of women experience this feeling during childbirth. I’m a man—I can’t even pretend to understand what it must be like but you must try not to be frightened. I can understand your frustration, particularly when you’ve worked so hard at your classes. But nature is a formidable force and it’s easy to forget that. Sometimes babies just don’t come the way we wanted them to and there’s no shame attached to that. Natural birth may be preferable but it isn’t always viable.

‘The important thing is to deliver a healthy baby to a mother who isn’t too exhausted to care for him or her.’ He gave her hand another squeeze and stood up, pleased to see that the tight, anxious look had left her face.

‘Are you happier with that?’ he quizzed.

‘Much happier,’ said Mrs Markham with quiet fervency.

Jamie nodded his dark head. ‘And just where is that husband of yours? I thought he wanted to be in on the birth.’

‘Oh, but he does! His firm sent him to Paris on business—he should be landing at Heathrow any minute now.’

‘Good. You’ll feel even better when he’s here to hold your hand.’

‘Thank you, Doctor!’

He turned towards Sister. ‘Could you organise for the infusion to be set up, please, Sister?’

Sister Singleton nodded her head and the outdated and frilly cap, which she refused to abandon, bobbed up and down in a froth of lace as she did so. ‘I’ll go and check it with one of the pupil midwives now.’

‘Where’s Dr Alcott?’ asked Jamie, as they moved towards the door. There had been no sign of the registrar since he had arrived. And considering that he had been the one to call Jamie in because he wasn’t happy about the way Mrs Markham was progressing it was peculiar behaviour for him not to be here, to say the least.

As he asked the question Sister shot him an odd look which, even to the least discerning person, would have had an underlying message. To Jamie the look spoke volumes.

‘I’m glad you mentioned that, Jamie,’ said Sister quietly, looking from side to side as though they might be overheard. ‘I’d like to talk to you about Dr Alcott.’

‘When?’

‘Now, if you don’t mind. I’ll just go and organise the drip then I’ll come back along to my office and meet you there. I’ll bring coffee, if you like—you look as though you could do with a cup. You were up most of the night delivering, so the night staff tell me.’

Jamie stifled his objection to hanging around the labour ward more than was absolutely necessary. Clearly it was necessary and Sister obviously wanted to speak to him privately. She wasn’t usually the kind of chatty ward sister who spent her time drinking coffee with the doctors. He also had that time-worn and usually fairly accurate gut feeling that he was going to be in Labour Ward for some time.

Deliberately refusing to allow himself to think about Harriet at the swimming pool, he dug his hands deep in the pockets of his trousers and walked along the corridor towards Sister’s office, his mind busy composing a reply to a letter he had received from an American university that morning offering him a job. If it hadn’t been for Harriet and the prospect of unsettling her he might have been tempted to accept. Very tempted.

At the other end of the corridor a figure halted and froze.

Sarah stood and stared at the authoritative-looking man who was walking slowly towards her, his hands slung in his trouser pockets, obviously miles away.

Who the hell was he?

Trapped in the sensual claws of her first experience of instant and overwhelming attraction, Sarah stood stock-still in the middle of the corridor as she watched the man approach. She felt her heart clenching with some kind of primitive recognition, as though an alien hand had reached through her chest wall and squeezed it very tightly. She forgot to breathe. Her pulse rocketed. She almost sagged back against the wall in fright.

Fright? Who did she think she was kidding?

As she watched the man grow closer she felt flooded with the most extraordinary sense of elation. Could there be such a thing as love at first sight? she wondered wildly. She didn’t stop to think what she must look like and even if she had she would not have cared. She was being carried along on the strength of some emotion that she had never experienced in her life before. She had to talk to him. She simply had to!

‘Hello!’ she said boldly and stood directly in his path, giving him the benefit of her biggest, brightest smile. Sarah’s brother had always said that her smile could have charmed the birds off the trees. She had never even been conscious of its charm before but now she was. She wanted to charm this man more than she had ever wanted anything in her life.

Jamie frowned, suddenly and unaccountably wary, as his eyes swept assessingly over the young woman who was blocking his path. She oozed confidence, he thought. Simply oozed it. A confidence which was usually only found in stunningly beautiful women, in his experience. And this woman was no beauty.

Not classically, anyway.

And then he looked a little more closely and frowned again.

Not beautiful, no. But something else. Something... He tried to analyse it.

She was fairly tall and she carried herself superbly, with poise and stature. As though someone had taught her from an early age to always walk as though there were two heavy books on top of that thick, shiny dark hair.

And her limbs were superbly proportioned; muscular but with the kind of natural strength that came from playing sport—not the kind of artificial muscle tone that resulted from hours and hours spent in the gym. The healthy curves of hip and breast were slender, yet full. Someone who looked as though she enjoyed her food without being ruled by it. Not a woman obsessed with magazine images, striving for an unnatural pre-pubescent shape, for whom food had become her body’s enemy. She had the body of a woman. Botticelli would have approved, Jamie thought ruefully. Almost as much as he did.

And she had the bright sparkle of youth and energy, too—her cheeks pink and glowing and her eyes alive and dancing. And what eyes! They were green and clever and slanting—the most astonishing shade of emerald that he could ever remember seeing. But then he creased his forehead so that his dark brows almost met as a distant bell of memory jangled in the depths of his mind but her physical presence was so arresting that the fleeting memory was consigned to oblivion.

She wore the thin, pale blue cotton, shortsleeved top and trousers and clogs that only the theatre staff normally wore and yet he could have sworn that she didn’t work here. He would have recognised her instantly if he had seen her before.

Something about her stole into him like the warmth of the first spring day after a hard, unforgiving winter and Jamie stiffened defensively.

It was like having a fantasy come to life and Sarah was dying to hear him speak. ‘Hello,’ she said again, more softly this time, but the smile remained undiminished in its brilliance.

Jamie saw danger in that smile—a danger that he didn’t dare attempt to define. Biting back the urge to respond to her greeting as eagerly as a cat would lap at a bowlful of cream, he tightened his mouth instead. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded, his deep voice roughened and harsh. ‘Do you work here?’

Her fantasy daydream dissolved into dust. She swallowed back the disappointment. ‘I don’t actually work here—’ she replied. She had been about to add, ‘not yet,’ when she saw his rather sensational mouth twist from that horrible hard line into a curve of critical censure.

Jamie was so disorientated by a curious and potent cocktail of desire, coupled with intense irritation, that he was scarcely aware of what he was saying. ‘Then what the hell are you doing here?’ His glare increased.

Hospitals were no longer the safe havens of days gone by. A few devastating incidents of kidnapping from various maternity units in different parts of the country over the past few years had heightened public awareness of the need to protect hospitals from the whims of disturbed strangers.

Sarah was unused to such blatant hostility. It felt like diving headlong into uncharted and unpleasant waters. She bristled with indignation. ‘What on earth do you think I’m doing here?’ she demanded, trying not to think about what a fabulous pair of blue eyes he had.

Jamie shrugged and the subtle interplay of muscles didn’t escape Sarah’s notice! She felt her heart renew its quickened pace even while she glared back at him.

‘How should I know?’ he responded dismissively, common sense returning as he concentrated fiercely on blotting out the very physical impact she was having on him. ‘You aren’t wearing a name-badge. Are you? You could be anyone.’ He saw her dark brows rise in disbelief and he nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ he affirmed. ‘Anyone. You could be on your way to kidnap one of the babies in the postnatal ward, for all I know.’

Sarah wavered between exploding with rage and exploding with laughter and laughter won. He was much too gorgeous to shout at! Her green eyes crinkled at the corners in a disturbingly familiar way to Jamie. She held her hands up in appeal, palms facing out. ‘Do I really look like a kidnapper?’ she appealed in a throaty murmur.

Jamie realised that he was being absurd but he couldn’t stop himself. If he disapproved of her it helped. Helped him, that was. If the disapproval went then that might mean that he would do something completely out of character and kiss those full, sweet lips until she begged him to take her.

Appalled at the rampant line his thoughts had taken, he forced himself to behave reasonably. ‘I have no idea.’ His voice was cool. ‘Fortunately, I have never been acquainted with a kidnapper.’ How preposterous this conversation would sound to an outsider, he thought with a disturbing flash of insight.

‘I’m sure you haven’t,’ agreed Sarah, deadpan.

She was laughing at him! Damn the woman, thought Jamie angrily, and then realised something else, too. That he was becoming unbearably aroused. Dear Lord, how pathetic could he get? Turned on by a foxy-eyed stranger just because she had had the gall to confront him?

He sucked air into his lungs. He scrabbled around for some of his customary authority, remembering the calm, assured way that he had spoken to Mrs Markham just a few minutes ago. He duplicated that voice now with the eagerness with which a drowning man would have clutched onto a raft.

‘I dare say that you have a perfectly bona fide reason for wandering around the unit without a name-badge,’ he observed coolly, ‘although I note that you still have not provided me with a satisfactory explanation.’

Sarah’s good humour was evaporating very quickly. Disappointed that her supposed knight in shining armour was turning out to have the disposition of a high court judge with dyspepsia was bad enough but to have him talk to her in that—that patronising way of his. Well! She lifted her chin in what only her family and closest friends would have recognised as the first sign of one of ‘Sarah’s paddies’.

‘And why the hell should I provide you with a “satisfactory explanation”?’ she mimicked angrily.

Jamie did something that he had never done before, not in all his years as a doctor.

He pulled rank.

‘Because I’m the consultant in charge of the unit?’ he suggested arrogantly, outraged by her unblinking look of boredom.

Sarah wasn’t in the least bit fazed by his statement. Her father was a retired professor of surgery and her big brother was a consultant at one of London’s largest teaching hospitals. What did he expect her to do—start genuflecting at his feet? ‘So?’ she responded coolly.

Jamie was floored by her attitude. He had been working at Southbury Hospital for just under a year and in that time he bad never had a cross word with another person. He found himself wondering briefly what it would be like to subdue this beautiful, spirited creature and then realised too late that such thoughts were taking him irrestistibly up the path of desire again.

Determined to win something warmer from her than the frosty look of disapproval that she was currently subjecting him to, Jamie gave her the smile that he normally reserved for his favourite patients and tried reason again. ‘I’m sure that if you were a mother who had just given birth,’ he began, using the same voice that had given Mrs Markham such reassurance earlier, ‘then you would not rest easy if you thought that unidentified people were being allowed to walk around the unit. unchallenged.’

He did have a point, Sarah acknowledged reluctantly, and she gladly let her disapproval slip away.

‘Would you?’ he persisted, noting with pleasure the way that her eyes had begun to glow with green fire again.

‘No,’ she admitted, with a grin. ‘Shall we start again?’ she added disarmingly and held one long, slender-fingered hand out towards him. ‘Sarah Jackson,’ she said. ‘Fully qualified midwife—as of two weeks ago!’

Her name had stirred some faint, longsuppressed memory but Jamie was so caught up with the desire to touch her that he paid it no heed. He extended his own hand, caught the cool, silky-satin smoothness of hers and resisted the urge to run his fingers lingeringly up and down the skin. ‘Jamie Brennan,’ he smiled. ‘And I think I’ve already stated my reason for being here. Overstated it, in fact,’ he added in a self-deprecating aside.

Sarah gave another sunny smile, not noticing that her hand was still locked tightly in his warm grasp. ‘Oh, that’s OK,’ she said breezily. ‘You were quite right to challenge me.’

‘So do you—work here?’ he queried, his breath unconsciously catching in his throat as his body acknowledged how important her answer was to him, even if his mind was not so easy to convince.

‘I start on Monday,’ said Sarah happily, as she observed that his sensational mouth had softened slightly and that the thick, black fringe of his lashes wasn’t managing to conceal the sapphire brilliance of his eyes.

Jamie seemed to be caught in a sensual time warp. Instinctively he let the pad of one thumb slide slowly across the soft palm of her hand and Sarah almost fainted with the shock of how much pleasure such a seemingly innocent gesture could produce. She often wondered afterwards what would have happened next had not a sound interrupted them.

‘Jamie!’ came a voice and Sister Singleton came hurrying down the corridor towards them and one look at her astonished face reminded Jamie that he was still holding Sarah’s hand. To let it fall would have seemed a kind of betrayal and he squeezed it before breaking contact. But, compared to the comforting squeeze he often gave to patients, this one felt positively X-rated!

‘Hello, Sister,’ he said calmly.

‘Jamie,’ nodded Sister pleasantly, turning her attention to the young woman beside him.

Sarah, who was just discovering what blushing felt like for the first time in her life, read the question in the senior nurse’s eyes.

‘Hello, Sister,’ she said, rather breathlessly. ‘I’m Sarah Jackson. One of your new midwives.’

‘Sarah Jackson?’ frowned Sister.

‘That’s right! I’m not really supposed to start until Monday but I thought...thought...’ she gave a beseeching smile ‘...that I’d have a look around the department to sort of familiarise myself with things. Just in case I didn’t know where to look for things on Monday,’ she finished lamely.

Sister Singleton nodded her greying hair, amused to note that the tension between the two young people was—as the best books always put it—charged! So Jamie Brennan was getting interested in women at last, was he? And not before time, either! But her face remained bland as she said, ‘That was very commendable of you, Staff Nurse. Have you seen everything you want to see?’ she queried politely although, judging by the girl’s face, the question was purely academic!

Sarah remained transfixed by jewel-bright eyes and the memory of that lingering, stroking movement of his thumb that had rather indecently suggested things to her which she was only just discovering existed! ‘Oh, yes, um—thanks, Sister!’ she said.

Jamie, still caught up in the spell that she had woven around him, was unwilling to see her go lest he discover that he had just dreamt her up and was just working out how he could keep her waiting until Sister had said whatever it was that she wanted to say to him when there was a kerfuffle at the door.

The three of them looked up to see a tall, slim man with blond curly hair, dressed entirely in squashy black leathers and with an expensive pair of sunglasses obscuring his eyes. He looked mean and sexy and very slightly dangerous. Underneath his arm he carried a helmet, although a guitar wouldn’t have looked out of place since he resembled the lead singer of an extremely well-known rock band!

What the hell is Mick still doing here? thought Sarah with a sinking heart. Just when she was sure that she was winning Sister over, too. And although Mick might be the prize-winning doctor of his generation—the one-to-watch, as all the consultants were currently saying—why, oh, why did he have to strut around the place looking as though he was about to start a revolution?

‘Hi, babe!’ said Mick cheerfully. ‘They told me I’d find you here.’

Jamie swallowed down distaste, jealousy and the violent desire to punch this no-good layabout in the teeth!

But Sister Singleton was not too old to recognise outrageous sex appeal even if the possessor of it did look like a rock star. She put on her sternest voice but for once it did not sound in the least bit convincing. ‘Would you mind telling me what you’re doing in this department, young man?’

Mick took his sunglasses off and Sister was nearly rocked off her feet by the impact of golden brown eyes and a brilliant white smile set in the kind of face that could only be described as pure perfection. ‘Sure can, Sister,’ he said, in his deep, distinctive drawl. ‘I came looking for Sarah—and now I’ve found her.’

The look of disgust on Jamie Brennan’s face making her feel sick, Sarah decided that there was nothing to do but go. And go quickly.

‘Thank you for letting me look around, Sister,’ she said hastily. ‘And I look forward to seeing you on Monday. Goodbye, Mr Brennan,’ she ventured tentatively. ‘It was nice to have met you.’

But Jamie didn’t answer.