she felt soft colour brush her cheeks.
‘I was just trying to work out if I’d got time,’ she ad-libbed weakly.
‘Liar. Come on, Sal, I’m not going to jump your bones. If you don’t get in there soon the vultures will have descended on the pot and drained it.’
She summoned a smile. ‘I’d better come now, then, hadn’t I?’
‘Dr Baker?’
They turned towards the voice of the young SHO, who was looking hopelessly out of his depth. ‘Yes, Toby?’
‘Um—I wonder if you could look at this X-ray for me, sir. I’m not sure if it’s a fracture.’
Nick turned back to Sally and gave her a wry grin. ‘Now you’re definitely safe,’ he murmured, and went into the cubicle, leaving her heading towards the staffroom with a sense of lingering disappointment that she was totally at a loss to understand.
There was still half a pot of coffee, and there was nobody in there, so she filled a mug, curled up in one of the chairs near the corner of the little room and rested her head against the back of the chair.
Bliss. The coffee smelt wonderful, and for a moment she was content just to inhale the aroma and relax. She hadn’t slept well—too many painful memories churning, too much turbulent thought to be able to escape to oblivion. Seeing Nick again had stirred up a whole hornet’s nest, and she felt edgy and restless and unhappy.
Still, for a moment she could relax. She opened her eyes, and jumped, almost slopping her coffee in her lap as she focused on him lounging against the worktop on the far side of the room.
‘You’ve done it again!’ she snapped, and he gave a wry grin.
‘Sorry. I thought you were asleep. I was just contemplating my options.’
‘Options?’ she said suspiciously. ‘What options?’
The smile was lazy. ‘Foregoing the coffee and leaving you in peace, removing the cup so you didn’t drown yourself in it when it tipped over, or waking you up. You’ve saved me from doing the wrong thing—unless just existing is enough to put me in your bad books?’
He looked so crestfallen she had to smile, even though she knew it was all an act.
‘I’m awake,’ she assured him, and he grinned and filled a mug, sitting down at right angles to her on the other side of the corner.
‘How’s the coffee?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t tried it yet. I was getting high just smelling it.’
‘You’ll be glue-sniffing in a minute. Just drink it.’
She buried her nose in the mug, breathed again and tasted. ‘Oh, gorgeous. You always could make good coffee.’
‘Yours was always lousy, if I remember,’ he said softly, and she could have kicked herself for bringing up the past.
‘I’ve got better,’ she said, firmly switching to the present, and he let it go. Not for long, though, she was sure. She had a feeling Nick was headed for memory lane with her in tow, whether she wanted to go there or not.
And she didn’t. The past was buried, her memories and her happiness and everything she cared for with it, and the last thing she needed was Nick dredging it all up again and throwing her life into chaos.
She drained her coffee, almost scalding her tongue and throat and not caring. ‘Lovely,’ she lied, not having tasted it in the end, and she unfolded her legs, stood up and tugged her dress straight. ‘I have to fly. We aren’t that quiet. Thanks for the coffee.’
She put her mug down and made her escape, leaving Nick to drink his coffee alone.
An hour later she was kicking herself. She shouldn’t have said that about being quiet. They were never quiet, not this quiet, eerily so, as if the world had ground to a halt.
She grabbed the chance to do some teaching with her new nurses, told them to do a totally unnecessary stock-check of the stores and went round the waiting room, ripping down torn posters and sticking up fresh ones.
‘Very pretty,’ Nick said from behind her. ‘How about a breath of fresh air? I’ve got some sandwiches from the trolley—care to join me?’
‘I’m busy,’ she lied, and he snorted.
‘Sally, you’ve been killing time for the past hour. You have to eat, you may as well do it now.’
‘Has it occurred to you that maybe I don’t want to eat with you?’ she snapped, and then regretted it when she saw the flicker of reproach in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said with a sigh, too honest to lie to him, too kind to hurt him so casually. ‘OK, I’ll have lunch with you, just this once.’
‘Such generosity,’ he murmured drily, just to make her feel even worse!
They collected the sandwiches from his locker and filled fresh mugs with coffee, then headed out into the warm, humid August day. She led him round the corner of the building to a quiet, shady spot under the trees on the edge of a little garden. There was a bench there, and by a miracle there was nobody sitting on it.
‘Perfect,’ Nick said with a grin, and settled down, opening packets and offering them to her. ‘Prawn salad and mayo, egg mayo or BLT?’
All her favourites. She sighed softly. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured, taking a prawn salad to start with and avoiding the knowing glint in his eye.
‘So, tell me,’ he said without preamble. ‘What have you been up to for the past seven years?’
Getting over you, she thought, but that one was definitely staying private.
‘Work, mostly. I’ve been here three years now, two as a junior sister, one as a G grade.’
‘Still enjoying it?’
She nodded slowly, thoughtfully. ‘Yes. It’s tough—it’s a difficult job, A and E. You see too much.’
‘Tell me about it,’ he said drily. ‘I don’t know why I went for it, except that it appealed to my sense of drama. I’m still an adrenaline junky, and I like making snap decisions and staying on my toes. It seemed to answer all the relevant criteria better than any other branch of medicine.’
That sounded like Nick. She remembered the dangerous sports he’d indulged in, the way he’d always driven just that tiny bit too fast for absolute safety—the times they’d failed to use contraception because they’d been somewhere unprepared and playing Russian roulette had appealed to him.
Except, of course, it hadn’t been him who’d lost—
‘Egg mayo?’
‘Please,’ Sally said, dragging her mind back to the present and safer territory. He held the packet out to her, and she eased the sandwich out, her fingers brushing his as she did so.
Heat shot up her arm, and she all but snatched the sandwich away and scooted further
