Baby Twins to Bind Them
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Carol Marinelli
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Chapter One
Before
‘YOU PAGED ME to see a patient.’
‘No, I didn’t.’ Candy, holding an armful of sheets, smiled when it would have been far easier to stand there and gape. He was stunning—tall, slender, wearing a suit and a tie. His dark brown hair was cut short and his voice was so deep and commanding that it stopped Candy in her tracks. She met his chocolate-brown eyes fully and it took a moment to respond normally. ‘Who are you here to see?’
‘A Mr Thomas Heath.’
Candy walked over to the board. Emergency at the London Royal Hospital was quiet this afternoon but as she was in Resuscitation Candy didn’t know which patients were in the cubicles. After a quick scan of the board, she located Mr Heath. ‘He’s in cubicle seven. Trevor’s the nurse looking after him. He must be the one who paged you.’
‘Thanks for that. By the way I’m Steele.’
‘Steele?’
He watched as her very blue eyes moved to his name badge. ‘Well, Dr Guy Steele, if you’d prefer to be formal,’ he said.
‘Steele will do.’ She must look like a dental commercial, Candy thought, for she simply couldn’t stop smiling at him. He must be thirty or mid-thirties, which was a lot more than her twenty-four years, and he was also way older than anyone she had ever fancied, yet he had this impact, this presence, that had Candy’s heart galloping in her chest.
‘And you are?’ he asked.
‘Candy. Candy Anastasi.’ She watched a smile twitch on his lips as she said her name. ‘I know, I know, I should be tall, leggy and blonde to carry off a name like that!’ Instead, she was short and a bit round with long black ringlets and piercing blue eyes. ‘There’s a story there.’
‘I can’t wait to hear it, Nurse Candy.’
He had the deepest voice that she’d ever heard. Like a headmaster, he was stern and bossy, yet it was all somehow softened by a very beautiful mouth that she could barely drag her eyes from. ‘You’ll never hear the story of my name,’ Candy said.
‘Oh, we’ll have to see about that.’
Had they been flirting? Candy wondered as sexy-as-hell Steele walked off.
‘Who’s that?’ Kelly said as they started to strip one of the resuscitation beds.
‘Steele!’ Candy said in a deep low voice, making Kelly laugh. She continued speaking gruffly while they bent over and tucked the sheet in. ‘Or Dr Guy Steele if we want to be formal and, young lady, I’m going to make your eardrums reverberate with my deep—’
‘Nurse Candy?’
Candy froze when she realised that Steele was behind her.
‘Could I borrow your stethoscope?’ he asked.
She laughed at being caught impersonating him and turned around and took her stethoscope from her neck and held it out to him, yet pulled back as he went to take it. ‘You can,’ she said, the stethoscope hovering. ‘Just so long as you stop calling me Nurse Candy.’
He just took the stethoscope, smiled and walked off.
They made up all the beds and checked the crash trolleys and then gave up pretending to be busy, given that Lydia, the manager, was in her office. Instead, they took a jug of iced tea to the nurses’ station, where Steele was tapping away on the computer. It was a lovely early summer day but the air-conditioning was struggling and it was nice to sit on the bench and gossip, though Steele had a couple of questions for her.
‘How do you get into the pathology lab to check results?’ he asked, not looking around.
‘You’ve got your password?’ Candy checked.
‘I have and I’ve got into...’ He tapped again. ‘Got it.’
‘Have you told your parents about Hawaii yet?’ Kelly asked Candy, resuming the conversation they’d been having in the kitchen as they’d made their drink.
‘No.’
‘You go in four weeks’ time,’ Kelly pointed out.
‘They might not notice that I’ve gone,’ Candy said hopefully, then let out a sigh. Her parents were Italian, strict and very prone to popping over to her flat unannounced. They also spoke every day on the phone. ‘I know I’ll have to tell them or I’ll be listed on Interpol as a missing person.’
Candy had, on a whim, booked a holiday to Hawaii. Well, it hadn’t been purely on a whim—she had already been aware that she needed to get away when the infomercial had appeared on her screen with a very special offer for the first ten callers. She’d been tired, a bit jaded and upset over a stupid fling with Gerry, one of the head nurses here. Thankfully he was in Greece for a couple of months, which spared Candy her blushes, but when she’d reached for the phone and, lucky her, been amongst the first ten callers, she’d known she needed this break.
She couldn’t wait for two weeks in which to lie on a beach and explore the stunning island at leisure while she attempted to sort out a few things that were on her mind.
‘They’re going to freak when I tell them,’ Candy admitted. ‘They know that I can’t really afford it.’
‘It’s all paid for?’ Kelly checked, and Candy nodded.
‘All except for spending money, but I’ve just spoken to the hospital bank and I’ve got loads of shifts. Actually, I haven’t got a single day off until I fly.’
‘Where are your shifts?’
‘In the geriatric unit.’
Kelly pulled a face. ‘Yuk.’
Candy didn’t mind. She had enjoyed working in the geriatric unit during her training and was really grateful for the extra work. Even if she was exhausted at the prospect of nearly four more weeks without so much as a day off.
As her parents would point out, when she finally got around to it and told them about her holiday, it was foolish to be working extra shifts because you were so tired that you needed a break—but Candy just wanted to get away for a while.
‘When do you start working there?’
‘The weekend. I’m working Friday night and then I’ve got a four-hour shift on Sunday morning, then back here Monday.’
‘Okay.’ Steele turned around. ‘I want Mr Heath pulled over to Resus. He needs to be monitored while I start him on some medication. His bloodwork’s dire.’
‘Sure.’ Candy jumped down from the bench and she and Trevor brought Mr Heath over.
Candy wrote his name on the whiteboard and turned to Steele. ‘Sorry, what specialty is he under?’
‘Geriatrics,’ Steele said, then he gave her a thin smile. ‘Yuk!’
Candy’s cheeks went pink; she wanted to point out that she hadn’t been the one who had said that.
‘It’s okay,’ Steele relented when he saw her uncomfortable expression. ‘You hit a nerve—I hear that sort of thing a lot.’
‘So are you a new geriatric consultant?’ Kelly asked, but Steele shook his head.
‘No, I’m only here temporarily. I’m covering for six weeks while Kathy Jordan is on extended leave.’
‘Just six weeks?’ Kelly asked shamelessly.
‘Yep,’ Steele said, and walked off.
‘Wow, talk about bringing the schmexy into geriatrics,’ Kelly said. ‘And you’re going to be working there, you lucky thing. I bet you’re not complaining now.’
She hadn’t been complaining in the first place, Candy was tempted to point out.
They soon paid for the lull in patients because, not an hour later, the department had filled and she and Kelly were busy in Resus, Kelly with a very ill baby and Candy attempting to calm down Mr Heath. He was rather shaky from the medication and was getting increasingly distressed and trying to climb down from the resuscitation bed.
‘The medicine makes your heart race, Mr Heath,’ Candy tried to explain to the gentleman. ‘It will settle down soon...’ But he couldn’t understand what she said and kept trying to climb off the bed so Candy tried speaking louder. ‘The medicine—’
‘You do it like this.’ Steele saw that she was struggling and came over. ‘Mr Heath!’ he boomed.
The people in the Waiting Room surely heard him, Candy thought as he gave the same explanation to Mr Heath that she had been trying to give. The gentleman nodded weakly in relief and then lay back on the pillows. ‘Good man,’ Steele barked and smiled at Candy and, in a comparatively dulcet tone, added, ‘I have the perfect voice for my job.’
‘You do,’ she agreed.
‘So you’re going to be doing a few shifts up on the geriatric unit?’
‘Yep.’
‘For a holiday that you can’t really afford?’
‘I know,’ Candy groaned.
‘Well, good for you,’ Steele said, and Candy blinked in surprise. ‘Okay, once Mr Heath’s medication has finished I want him monitored for another hour down here. Then everything’s sorted for him to be admitted. We’re just waiting on a bed, which might be a couple of hours. I’ve spoken to the ward and they have said that they’ll ring down when they’re ready for him to come up.’
‘Ha-ha,’ Candy said, because there was no way that the ward was likely to ring down. Instead, she would have to chase them and push for the bed to be readied.
Steele well understood her sarcastic comment. ‘Well, I hope that they do ring down in a timely manner. I’m less than impressed with the waiting times for patients to get into a bed at the Royal.’
With that he stalked off, possibly to return to whatever fluffy white cloud he’d just drifted down from, Candy thought.
She’d never, ever been so instantly captivated by someone.
Candy left Kelly watching Mr Heath when she was told to go for her lunch break. She’d forgotten to bring lunch so she bought a bag of salt-and-vinegar crisps from the vending machine and put them between two slices of bread and butter. Sitting down in the staffroom, she smiled at Trevor, who was having his lunch too, and checked her phone. Yes, her parents had called, wondering why she hadn’t been over.
She’d tell them about Hawaii tonight, Candy decided. Just get it over and done with and then maybe then she’d feel better. Yet she was incredibly tired and really just wanted to go home, have dinner and an early night.
‘Here!’
That delicious voice tipped her out of introspection and she looked up at Steele, who was holding a stethoscope, which she took from him.
‘Thank you,’ Candy said, ‘though you didn’t have to rush to bring it back down. It’s only a hospital-issue stethoscope.’
‘Oh,’ Steele said. ‘I thought I’d pinched yours. Still, it doesn’t matter, I was coming down anyway. I’m waiting for a patient to arrive—a direct admission from her GP, though she’s refusing to go straight to the ward. She’s just agreed to a chest X-ray and some blood tests, and then she thinks she’s going home!’
‘Thinks?’ Candy asked as Steele sat down beside her and stretched out his long legs. It was nice that he sat down next to her when there were about twenty seats to choose from. She turned and smiled as he spoke on.
‘Her GP is extremely concerned about her. He thinks there’s far more going on than she’s admitting to. Macey has had the same GP for thirty years and if he’s worried about her then so am I. He thinks she’s depressed.’ He turned and looked right into her eyes and Candy felt her heart do a little flip-flop. ‘It’s a big problem with the elderly.’
‘Really?’
Steele nodded and looked at what she was eating. ‘That looks so bad it has to be good.’
‘It’s fantastic,’ Candy said, and ripped off half her sandwich and gave it to him. ‘The trick is lots of butter.’
‘That’s amazing!’ Steele said, when he’d tasted it.
‘I’m brilliant with bread,’ Candy said. ‘Toasted sandwiches, ice-cream sandwiches, beans on toast...’
‘I thought a nice Italian girl like you would be brilliant in the kitchen.’
‘Sadly, no,’ Candy said. ‘I’m a constant source of concern to my mother. Anyway, who said I’m nice?’
They smiled.
A smile that was just so deliciously inappropriate for a man you’d met only an hour or so ago. A smile she had never given to another man before and, really, she had no idea where it had come from.
Candy Anastasi! she scolded herself as she looked into those dark brown eyes.
Step away from the very young nurse, Steele told himself, but, hell, she was gorgeous.
Lydia came in then and they both looked away from each other. Lydia was waving a postcard of a delicious aqua ocean and Candy found that she was holding her breath in tension as Lydia read out the card. ‘There’s a postcard from Gerry. It reads, “Glad that none of you are here.”’
Lydia gave a tight smile as she pinned it on the board and Candy just stared at the television.
Was that little dig from Gerry aimed at her?
‘When is he back?’ Trevor asked.
‘End of July, I think.’
Lydia’s voice was deliberately vague and Candy knew why. Gerry, the head nurse in Emergency, had been strongly advised to take extended leave.
Gerry was one of the reasons that Candy wanted a couple of weeks on a beach with no company.
Candy’s parents had freaked when, at twenty-two, she had broken up with a man they considered suitable and had declared she was moving out. They had been so appalled, so devastated at the prospect of their only daughter leaving home that Candy had ended up staying for another year.
She’d simply had to leave in the end.
Her mother thought nothing of opening her post. She constantly asked whom Candy was talking to on the phone and when Candy pointed out she was entitled to privacy they would ask what it was she had to hide.
Last year she had moved out and, really, she had hardly let loose. She’d had a brief relationship with Gerry when she’d first moved into her flat but that hadn’t worked out and she had been happily single since then.
A couple of months ago, aware that Gerry was having some problems, she’d agreed to go out for a drink with him.
It had resulted in a one-night stand that had left Candy feeling regretful. Gerry had been annoyed to find out that their brief relationship hadn’t been resumed.
It was all a bit of a mess, an avoidable one, though. Candy was just grateful that no one at work knew about that regrettable night and Candy wanted it left far behind.
‘You’ll be sending postcards soon,’ Steele said, but Candy shook her head.
‘I won’t be thinking about this place for a moment.’
That wasn’t quite true, though. She would be thinking about work—Candy was seriously thinking of leaving Emergency.
