to back away but there was nowhere to go. The cold metal of the lockers pressed through the thin fabric of her blouse.
It was true that at eighteen she’d been terrified of her father. And as it had turned out, her fear had been fully justified.
But Jago didn’t know that, of course. He’d vanished into the sunset before any of it could get ugly, ignorant of the devastation he’d left behind him.
He’d never known what her father was like.
Very few people did.
‘Your father was a tough man—probably still is—but he’s a walk in the park compared to some of the patients we see in this department on a Saturday night.’
A walk in the park?
Remembering just what had transpired after Jago had left, Katy was shocked into speechlessness.
He stepped closer. ‘You don’t like disagreements or controversy and you hate all forms of violence. We do violence quite well in A and E, you know.’ His tone was smooth. ‘Saturday afternoons after football and rugby, nights after the pubs close. What are you going to do when the department is full of drunks? What are you going to do when someone turns round and hits you?’
He was trying to scare her off but it wasn’t going to work.
The only thing that frightened her about working in A and E was being close to him.
Especially the way he was acting at the moment.
Like a madman.
As if he wasn’t the man who’d taken her virginity and then walked away without a backward glance.
She cast him a confused look. ‘Why are you being like this?’
His gaze was hard and unsympathetic. ‘Because this is a horrifically busy department and frankly I don’t have time to nursemaid someone who’s main concern in life is whether she needs to file her nails.’
He made her sound frivolous and shallow, but maybe she’d seemed that way to him when he’d known her at eighteen. One thing was sure, if they were ever going to be able to work together effectively, they had to get the past out of the way.
‘You don’t know me any more.’ She kept her tone conciliatory, the way she did when her father was in one of his scary moods. ‘It’s been eleven years since you last saw me. Maybe we should talk about what happened, Jago.’
Maybe he could explain why he’d walked away.
Jago’s eyes were cold and his broad shoulders were rigid with tension. ‘The past is history. There’s nothing that I want to talk about and if you’re trying to convince me that you’ve changed, you’re wasting your breath. You’re forgetting that I met the man you’re engaged to.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘That in itself was enough to prove to me that you haven’t changed one little bit.’
Maybe he had changed, she reflected. Despite his Spanish ancestry, Jago had always been so emotionally controlled that in the past she’d longed to do something which would shake him out of his almost permanent state of indifference. Yet she sensed that at this moment he was hanging onto control by little more than a thread. For the first time she was seeing a hint of that volatility that was supposed to characterise Mediterranean men.
But what she didn’t understand was why. Something had obviously really challenged his legendary cool and she had absolutely no idea what. And his lack of remorse about the way he’d treated her still puzzled her. He seemed so hard.
She forced her mind back to the subject. ‘You don’t know anything about Freddie.’
‘I know he’s the man your father’s chosen for you.’ That burning dark gaze locked on hers with all the lethal accuracy of a deadly weapon. As he stepped even closer to her his voice dropped to a low purr, like a tiger soothing its prey before the kill. ‘Does he make you hot inside, Katy? Does he make you so desperate that he has you panting and ripping at his clothes?’
Powerful images exploded in her head and her face burned with shock and embarrassment at his explicit words.
‘Have you finished?’ Determined not to betray just how uncomfortable she felt, she looked him straight in the eye. It was a mistake.
She tumbled into the fathomless depths of his dark eyes and felt her knees tremble.
He leaned forward. ‘That man has no idea how to unlock the real Katy.’
‘And I suppose you think you do!’
‘Of course.’ The lazy arrogance in his voice was the final straw and she lifted a hand and slapped him so hard that the palm of her hand stung.
‘Dios mio.’ His head jerked backwards and he looked at her with raw incredulity, disbelief pulsating in the depths of his eyes.
Stunned by her own behaviour, Katy opened her mouth to apologise and then closed it again. There was no way she was apologising to him!
‘Eleven years is a long time, Jago, and you don’t know anything about who I am any more.’ Her small hands clenched by her sides and she forced herself to breathe normally. ‘I’m more than capable of working in this department and I’m going to marry Freddie.’
They stood, eyes trapped by an invisible force, until the door opened and a male voice said, ‘I’ve found our straggler. She’s still in the common room.’
The consultant walked in and gave Jago a nod before turning to Katy. Fortunately he didn’t seem to notice the reddened streak on Jago’s cheekbone.
‘If you’ve finished in here, I’ll take you out and see which member of staff you’re allocated to. We find that the new casualty officers settle in quickly if they work closely with another member of staff. I’ll just check who that is.’
‘You needn’t bother.’ Jago’s voice was soft and his eyes were still fixed on Katy’s pale face. ‘Dr Westerling will be working with me.’
His colleague looked startled. ‘Oh, right—well, you’ve obviously already met Jago Rodriguez, one of our other consultants. In that case, I’ll leave you in his capable hands. I’m sure you’re keen to get started.’
Jago’s mouth curled into a smile. ‘I’m sure Dr Westerling can’t wait.’
There was a sardonic gleam in his sexy dark eyes that brought a flush to her pale cheeks and a sick feeling to the pit of her stomach.
Working with Jago wasn’t just going to be difficult.
It was going to be a nightmare.
Twenty-four hours later Katy was wondering why she’d ever thought she’d be able to cope with A and E.
She’d seen a never-ending stream of patients, most of them angry at having been kept waiting for hours.
‘Can’t we see patients any faster?’ she asked Charlotte, the sister who had looked after her when she’d been brought in after her car accident. ‘I’m fed up with being verbally abused by everyone
