being examined by the doctor. A glance down at that spot herself told her why!
She knew her hip was extremely painful; in fact the nausea had begun in the car on the drive here from the pain of it. But she had just been concentrating on getting her outer clothing off earlier without fainting, and hadn’t had the strength to actually look at her hip. She wished she hadn’t bothered now either!
Her side was black and blue with bruising already, not just on the hip-bone but across her stomach and down her thigh too. It looked ghastly. No wonder Raff was staring.
Just when she thought she couldn’t stand the poking and prodding into her flesh any longer the doctor straightened.
‘Well, it looks as if you’ve been quite lucky, young lady.’ His smile had gone now to be replaced by a reproving frown. ‘I don’t think any bones have been broken here either. You sustained the injuries in a fall, I think you said?’
‘Yes,’ she nodded distractedly. ‘I tripped and fell over the pavement.’
The doctor continued to frown. ‘The injuries seem rather—severe, for a fall of that nature.’
‘Well, I——’ Colour flooded her cheeks as she sensed concern behind the question. She glanced at Raff, his mouth tight now as he too sensed the scepticism. My God, the doctor didn’t really think that …! She respected his concern, realised that he probably often had reason for it, but it really was unfair to Raff in the circumstances.
‘I fell in the street and Mr Quinlan very kindly helped me by driving me here,’ she told the doctor firmly. The last thing she wanted was to get involved with the police over what had, after all, just been an accident.
The doctor still didn’t look convinced, but there was really very little he could do about the situation in the face of her insistence. ‘We’ll X-ray the ankle and hip just to be sure,’ he told her gently. ‘And decide what to do with you once we have the result of those.’
That sounded rather ominous. What did he mean, ‘decide what to do with her’?
She wasn’t given the chance to ask either the nurse or the doctor that question before they bustled out of the room in deep conversation together, the doctor presumably on his way to treat another patient, the nurse to organise Jane’s X-rays.
Jane couldn’t quite look at Raff after the implication the doctor had made about him a few minutes ago.
He crossed the room to stand next to her. ‘I had no idea you were so badly marked,’ he spoke quietly.
She grimaced dismissively. ‘I bruise easily.’
He shook his head. ‘You must have fallen very heavily. Or else I did actually hit you with the car …’
‘No,’ she denied as she sensed the doubt in his voice. ‘I only said that earlier because I was annoyed by your bluntness,’ she explained truthfully.
‘Nevertheless, if I hadn’t driven around that corner at speed——’
‘You weren’t speeding,’ she cut in exasperatedly.
‘But——’
‘Mr Quinlan,’ Jane spoke steadily. ‘Believe me, my accident was not your fault.’
His mouth was tight. ‘Nevertheless, I’m responsible for you …’
‘I’m responsible for myself!’ Her tone was a little more vehement than the occasion warranted, but she was more than a little tired of being told she wasn’t capable of taking care of herself. She certainly wasn’t anyone’s responsibility. God, what an awful label to give someone! ‘I’m grateful to you for bringing me here.’ She spoke more calmly now. ‘But there’s really no need for you to delay yourself any longer.’
‘I was only on my way back to my home,’ he said dismissively, his gaze once again on the brightness of her hair.
‘Then your wife——’
‘I’m not married,’ he bit out curtly.
Jane couldn’t help but wonder why that was. Unless, as she had presumed earlier, he had been married and divorced. It was the most likely explanation. For a man who supposedly lived alone he had been in a hurry to get there earlier.
Something about this man raised her curiosity, possibly because she sensed there was no artifice in him—not even the one of politeness! Jordan would find him brash in the extreme, but then Jordan could be brash himself on occasion.
‘Nevertheless,’ she said firmly, ‘the X-rays will take some time, and I really mustn’t keep you any longer.’
‘You——’
‘Don’t bother to dress, Miss Smith.’ The nurse came back into the room, straightening up Jane’s discarded clothes. ‘We need you undressed for the X-ray, anyway.’
Jane had had no intention of even attempting to put her clothes back on in front of Raff Quinlan, even if she hadn’t been hurting so badly that the nausea was never far away.
Perhaps the hospital just wasn’t busy, or maybe it was the time of night, but the X-rays were completed and a diagnosis given within a matter of minutes; there were no bones broken, only the severe bruising. But even that was enough to make Jane shudder at the thought of putting her clothes on again.
Some of her distress must have shown on the paleness of her face.
‘Of course, I think we should offer you a bed for the night,’ the young doctor smiled encouragingly. ‘If only as a precaution.’
For ‘offer her a bed’ Jane knew he meant admit her to the hospital, and she had no desire to spend the night in a hospital ward. But she was sure the doctor was as aware as she was that the address she had given them was that of a hotel, a hotel she had actually booked out of earlier today.
‘Is that really necessary?’ Far from leaving, Raff had gone with her to the X-ray department, and then stayed right by her side while the doctor gave her his verdict on her injuries. Now he spoke with a quiet authority. ‘As long as Miss Smith has someone to take care of her, couldn’t she be allowed to leave?’
The doctor looked slightly irritated by this interruption, obviously still not quite convinced of the other man’s innocence in the affair, although he was holding a tight check on any more even veiled accusations of that nature. ‘I suppose so,’ he accepted slowly. ‘But as she——’
‘Miss Smith has somewhere to go,’ Raff told him arrogantly.
Even Jane looked at him in some surprise. If that ‘somewhere’ was his home, then he could forget it; she may be weak but she wasn’t helpless.
But if seeming to agree to that suggestion would get her out of here without too much fuss she could always make other arrangements once they were outside. After all, she didn’t have to go anywhere, do anything she didn’t want to do. After years of being ordered around she was finally free to make her own choices. Even if the majority of them this last week had been a disaster!
‘Miss Smith? Miss Smith?’ The doctor repeated his query more firmly at her wandering
