Nurse's One-Night Baby Surprise
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Louisa George
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CHAPTER ONE
‘PLEASE, DON’T MAKE ME go to school. Please.’ Fraser blinked fast at the woman in the passenger seat next to him as she stared out at the whitewashed stone buildings with their grey-blue slate roofs and the sign ‘Welcome to Bowness High School’. ‘I’ve got a tummy ache.’ He moaned and rubbed his belly, looking for sympathy.
But she clearly wasn’t doling any out today. She frowned, rolled her heavily mascaraed eyes and pulled her ponytail tight. ‘No, you haven’t. You’re fine.’
‘Please, don’t make me go. Please, Lily.’ He tugged on her arm and made sad eyes at her. ‘Can you write me a sick note?’
She glared at him. ‘Isn’t that supposed to be your job?’
‘I need a responsible person to do it for me,’ he teased. ‘Know any?’
‘Stop it, Dad.’ A reluctant smile finally...finally curved her lips and she play-punched his arm. ‘Honestly, you’re worse than me. You have to go. It’s work. You’ve signed a contract and everything. Stop messing about.’
‘Made you smile, though.’ That would be enough to see him through what he knew were going to be difficult days ahead. Just as the last few months...years, really, had been.
She threw him a look that would have frozen hell. ‘Only out of pity.’
‘You used to laugh at my jokes.’
‘Back when they were funny. Like, when I was six or something.’
Now she was fifteen going on twenty-five. Wearing non-regulation mascara and lip gloss that he’d refused to fight about this morning and a skirt that he was sure hadn’t been so short when they’d bought it a couple of weeks ago. He’d decided to let it go for today. Pick your battles. First day, new term, new school.
New start.
He remembered her first smile, her first tooth, her first day at nursery as if it were all yesterday. Where had that time gone? How had he ended up with this stroppy, beautiful, fierce teenager when only minutes ago she had been a tiny scrap that had fitted into the crook of his arm?
They’d always been a team and he’d always made her laugh. She’d loved his jokes almost as much as he loved her, but now she blamed him for everything that made her unhappy. He met her eyes—so dark like her mother’s—and saw the pain there. And the fear too. He had to make sure she was going to be okay. That was his job.
Until five years ago he’d shared that job with his ex. They’d co-parented as best they could with shared custody, living just streets apart, short-term lovers who’d become long-term friends. He’d been the bad cop to Ellen’s good cop. Funny, sweet, warm-hearted Ellen who had died, leaving both him and Lily bereft and him to parent on his own, clumsily navigating first their daughter’s deep grief and then teenage hormones. And now, in his daughter’s eyes, he was just all round bad.
He patted her hand. ‘Seriously, Lily, are you okay with this?’
She looked out at the sleet melting on contact with the heated windscreen, her smile dissolving into the sulky expression that had been ever-present on her lips since that icy five-hour drive north had brought them here to the Lake District, where her mother had grown up, leaving their London life behind. That expression had remained all through Christmas and New Year, particularly when they’d been to buy the uniform she was wearing now. Lily didn’t want to try. She didn’t want a new life, she’d been perfectly content with the old one.
And that was why they’d had to move.
She slid her hand from under his and twisted the handles of her expensive new backpack. If he was honest, she looked about as fed up as he’d ever seen her.
‘No.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m not okay about it and you know that already. But here we are anyway. I don’t really get a say in it, do I?’
His heart squeezed. If only Ellen were here, she’d know how to do this. But, then, if Ellen were here, he wouldn’t have upped sticks and moved away from all Lily knew. Out of desperation he’d thought of this place. Grasping at flimsy straws, he’d also wondered whether Lily’s godmother might have moved back here at some point too...cavalry to enlist to help him. Although he wasn’t sure she’d want to help after their last meeting five years ago.
Guilt rattled again. Had it been wise to move Lily so far from everything she knew? From the place where she had memories of her mother?
‘It’s going to be fun, Lily-Bee, if we just try. A fresh start for us both. It’s what we need. Trust me.’
Another dark look. This one said, I did trust you. Once. But now? Not so much. ‘A freezing start, more like. And boring. B-o-oring.’
‘Not once you’ve made friends.’
‘Duh. I have friends, Dad. Lots of them. Back in Clapham.’
They hadn’t been friends, they’d been...the only word to describe them was delinquents. He knew that made him sound a lot older than his thirty-four years. He’d watched helplessly as she’d changed from a happy little girl into a tearaway teenager who had refused to listen, refused to meet him halfway and refused to conform to even the lightest of rules. He’d been at a total loss as to what to do. So much for being the cool outreach doctor who understood teenagers.
But only a few moments ago he’d finally managed to get a smile from her and he wasn’t going to spoil it by raking over those old arguments again. ‘With your winning personality and the amazing talents you inherited from me, you’ll soon make lots more.’
Just one. One nice one. One that isn’t into drugs and drinking. One who actually attends school. Please.
He laughed, trying to show her he was joking, about the talents anyway.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, Dad. Whatever.’
‘They have an excellent drama programme.’
‘I stopped wanting to be an actress in year three.’
‘The science programme has won national awards.’
‘I don’t want to be a scientist either.’
‘What do you want, Lily-Bee?’
‘Not to be here.’ Her nostrils flared and she glared at him. He wasn’t sure if it was because he’d called her by her childhood nickname or because she was here in the car, staring at her future...or both.
‘You never know, you might change your mind. Give it a chance.’
Give us a chance.
They’d been all out of chances in London. Next stop for her had been the juvenile detention centre. The local police had had his number on speed dial.
Silence.
He dredged up another smile and his cheerful sing-song Dad voice. ‘Right, best get going. I’ll see you this afternoon and we can drive home together after my clinic’s finished.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘I can walk.’
‘It’s January. The forecast’s for snow. It’ll be cold and you’re not wearing walking clothes.’ He held back the criticism as he looked at the short skirt and school shirt open one button too many, unsure how his city girl would fit into the country school. But it was too late now. They were here and he was determined they’d make the best of it. ‘Anyway, it’ll be a good chance to chat about our first day at school.’
‘You’re only going to be here for a couple of hours later. I have to put up with it all day. Every day. Until I die of total boredom.’
‘Or you could embrace the delights of rural living in a beautiful place.’ Behind the school buildings rugged snow-topped mountains provided a breathtaking backdrop. Or would have, if visibility hadn’t been impeded by the low-hanging clouds heavy with sleet. He cleared his throat, deepened his voice and threw his arm out as if he was on stage, delivering an important soliloquy. ‘“I wandered lonely as a cloud...”’
‘Stop it, Dad. Maybe you should be the one doing drama, not me.’ Another eye-roll, followed by a tut. ‘Promise you won’t be embarrassing at school? Like, if you see me in the corridor, don’t even acknowledge you know me?’
‘Is there no end to the ways you can spear my heart?’ he said, trying to put a smile in his voice but remembering how everything his mum had said and done had almost killed him with embarrassment when he’d been Lily’s age. It didn’t mean her words didn’t hurt, though. ‘Everyone’s going to know eventually, Lily. It’s a small school. We have the same surnames. It won’t take a genius to work out we’re related.’
‘Please, just let me have a few precious hours where I’m not the “hot” doctor’s daughter?’
She made quotation marks with her fingers and pulled an I can’t believe I just said that about my dad face, and he tried hard not to laugh.
Hot? To a bunch of teenagers? Great. No wonder she was embarrassed. ‘Okay. You won’t know I’m there. I promise, I’ll keep a very low profile.’
‘Good. See you later, yeah?’
‘Absolutely.’ He leaned in to ruffle her hair the way he’d always done, but she was opening the door and swivelling out of her seat, completely oblivious. Out of reach. ‘Good luck for your first day, Lily-Bee.’
A bitter laugh came from her throat. ‘Believe me, I’m going to need it.’
Me too, he thought. More than you’ll ever know.
‘He hit me first.’ The boy pressed an ice pack to his swollen jaw and shivered. He was holding back tears, trying so hard to be the tough guy. ‘It was self-defence, miss. Honest.’
‘Hey, I wasn’t there and I’m not going to judge, Alfie. You don’t have to explain anything to me. Save that for your interview with the head teacher.’ Briana made her voice as soothing as possible. She had other ways of finding out what had happened without asking direct questions he could avoid. She needed to gain his trust first, which was going to take gentle handling and a bit of time, but she didn’t have that luxury right now with a queue of kids waiting and a doctor gone AWOL right on clinic opening. Typical. They couldn’t seem to get anyone to staff this clinic for longer than a term.
She gave Alfie a smile. ‘I just need to know what kind of injury you have, where it hurts and if you need an X-ray and painkillers.’
Having ascertained his bruised jaw wasn’t fractured, she did a quick assessment of the rest of him. His hair was matted with mud, his black uniform trousers were torn and ragged at the knee, his school bag looked as if it had been dragged through cow dung. His hands were red and raw, fingernails ingrained with dirt, no doubt from where he’d landed after the punch to his chin. Great start to the term for this poor lad. He shrugged a scraggy shoulder. ‘I’m fine.’
He wasn’t fine, and his bottom lip was starting to wobble as the shock of the fight wore off.
Briana looked at the boy’s reddened knuckles. ‘Any pain in your hands?’
He made a sound she thought might be ‘yes’, then said, ‘He said I was stupid. He said my sister’s stupid too and told me what he was going to do with her down by the lake.’ His face creased into an expression of pure disgust. ‘I told him she’s not a slut. That I’d punch his lights out if he said any more.’
‘She must be proud to have a brother like you to stick up for her.’
No eye contact, head down, he spoke into his chest. ‘She thinks I’m stupid too.’
‘I bet she doesn’t.’
‘They both do. Just because they’re two years older than me. That’s not my fault, is it? Worse thing is, she loves him.’ The boy shook his head in disbelief. ‘How can she love someone who says things like that about her and hits her kid brother?’
Oh. Briana hadn’t been expecting that.
‘She doesn’t know any better, Alfie. She’s far too young and doesn’t know what real love is. She thinks she does, but she’s got a lot of growing up to do.’
You get drawn in, you fall too hard and too quickly, get taken in by their manipulation and before you know it, you’re trapped.
Briana shoved her memories back. This was not the time to relive her own mistakes. ‘Do you want me to have a word with her?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Tell her not to go out with Lewis Parker? Good luck with that, miss. She won’t listen.’
‘I won’t actually say that, because you’re right, she’s not going to want to hear that from me. But I can have a gentle chat about relationship boundaries and expectations.’ She smiled. ‘Of course, I won’t put it like that either. Lecturing people tends to put them off, right?’
‘Right.’ He nodded and his shoulders seemed to relax a little.
She tried a different tack. ‘Lewis sounds like an annoying toddler. All that carrying on, trying to get attention.’
‘Yeah.’ His eyes brightened. ‘Like my little sister. She won’t shut up sometimes. She just makes a noise to get what she wants.’
‘And how do you get her to stop?’
‘Mum says if we ignore her, she’ll just get bored.’
‘And does she?’
‘Yeah. I s’pose.’ His expression became serious. ‘You think I should do that with Lewis? Like, ignore him?’
‘Do you think you can? It might help avoid a fight if you don’t let him get to you.’ Because they both knew Alfie was the one who’d hit out first. Trying to defend his sister, playing the tough guy. Saving face and family honour, even though he’d been provoked, because why else would a thirteen-year-old try his luck with someone two years older and a whole lot bigger? ‘Often, ignoring them is the first thing you can do. But there are lots of other things too.’
She made a mental note to speak to Lewis Parker’s form tutor as soon as she got the chance. Arming the victim as well as addressing the bad behaviour—or the underlying causes of the bad behaviour—often worked. What was going on in Lewis’s life that made him need to bully others?
A sharp rap on the door had her turning round. It was Andrea, one of the school administrators. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Briana, but I didn’t know how long you were going to be—’
‘I’m going, miss. Got to see Mr Wilson.’ Alfie put the ice pack down and shouldered his school bag. The bruise on his chin was dark and swollen and he did not look happy about the prospect of seeing the head teacher.
‘Okay, Alfie. Come back tomorrow morning so I can have a look at those bruises.’ And check on his well-being. Arm him with more strategies.
With kids like Alfie, the best way of helping his emotional needs was to disguise it as dealing with his physical ones. Crafty, but it worked.
Andrea smiled as the boy dashed out of the door. ‘The new doctor’s here. I’ve done a walk-round to show him the layout and explained how the clinic works, but he’s going to need the full Briana Barclay orientation.’
‘As much as I know after only being here for a term.’
‘You know more than him, that’s always a start, right? Oh...’ Andrea leaned closer and lowered her voice. ‘Prepare yourself. He is hot, hot, hot.’
‘Who? The new doctor that should have been here an hour ago? No one’s hot when they can’t be relied on to be on time.’
‘To be fair, he said the email had confirmed a two-thirty start.’ Andrea shrugged. ‘Maybe he got it wrong? Can’t have beauty and brains, right?’
‘I don’t care how good looking he is, if he isn’t here on time to see the students they’ll leave. It’s hard enough to get them to attend appointments. They won’t wait. They get the jitters, second-guess themselves and leave.’
‘Did I mention he was hot?’ Andrea fanned her face. Her cheeks were reddening, her eyes bright and dancing behind her reading glasses. She looked like a teenager swooning instead of a motherly fifty-something woman who should know better.
Bri laughed as she stalked into the waiting room with Andrea in her wake. ‘Right, where is he? Let’s get this over with. I have far more important things to do than mollycoddle a man—’
Oh, God. No.
‘Bri...’ Andrea was grinning and her eyes were wide, as if to say, Ta-da! I present to you the hot new doctor. ‘This is Fraser Moore. Our new adolescent health specialist. All the way from London.’
He was standing in the middle of the room, filling it with his enigmatic presence and good-natured smile that she knew were just masking the real Fraser Moore. And, yes, she could see how Andrea might think him hot with his wide, haunting dark eyes. The short dark hair that was well groomed in a stylish city-boy look. The tan-coloured chinos and pale blue merino sweater that skimmed his rugged body. Oh, yes...she could see that someone who didn’t know him would think him off-the-scale gorgeous, as she had done once upon a deluded time. Even the girls in the waiting room were staring at him as if a famous actor had just walked in.
But Bri knew better. She knew all about Fraser Moore.
Behind him a group of giggling girls burst into the waiting room. One of them stopped short, stared first at her then Fraser, her mouth gaping. She was about fifteen years old, hair pulled back into a long ponytail, dark eyes. She looked so familiar but Bri hadn’t seen her around the school before.
Fraser’s eyes widened and he looked guilty as hell, enough that Bri iintsinctively knew who this girl was.
Lily? Sweet, sweet Lily. Her heart lifted and hurt at the same time. All grown up with that teenager-going-on-twenty coquettishness.
All those missed years and missed chances.
Emotions hit her in the chest like bullets. Pain, sadness, rage, love. Bri’s heart pounded, white noise filled her ears. She had no chance to gather herself and take stock. No chance to breathe. To try to drag on an expression that wasn’t one of pure shock.
They lived here in the Lake District now?
Why? Fraser was a confirmed and devoted city man. When he’d visited years ago with Ellen and baby Lily he’d made it clear he couldn’t breathe in all this space. Hated the crap public transport, the lack of buzz. The inward-looking parochialism of it all. So why here and why now?
And still Andrea was talking in her sugar-sweet voice, oblivious to the fact that the only hot things in the room right now were the daggers zipping between Bri and the man she’d hoped she’d never see again. ‘Dr Fraser, this is our lovely school nurse, Briana Barclay.’
Briana closed her eyes and tried to stop her body from shaking. ‘Fraser? What the actual hell are you doing here?’
The man who’d stolen the last few years of the most precious and dear friendship of her life. Who had prevented her from seeing her dying best friend in her last months of need. The man who’d blanked her and ghosted her. And now he was here to...what? To cause her pain? All over again?
Like hell he would.
