himself that anger achieved nothing. Losing his temper was not going to help.
Emotion didn’t solve problems. What was needed was rational discussion.
She was going to have her say. He was going to have his say.
It was all going to be calm and reasonable.
They were going to be civilised.
‘You know Ella?’ Rose was looking at him, surprised. ‘That’s wonderful.’
Nikos gave a cool smile, well aware that Ella was going to find the situation a great deal short of wonderful. She’d kept the news of her pregnancy from him. ‘I’m looking forward to renewing our acquaintance.’
‘Well, you won’t have to wait long. She’s on a late shift this afternoon. She’ll be here any minute.’
As if on cue Nikos heard her laughter from somewhere behind him and the sound released his temper. How could she laugh?
What was funny about intentionally depriving a man of his child?
Emotion thickened until he could taste it, until he was ready to put his fist through something.
Rational discussion was no longer on his wish list.
He forgot calm and reasonable.
He forgot civilised.
As she walked through the door, his anger erupted with volcanic force.
Her arms were raised, her hands occupied scooping her shiny blonde hair into a ponytail, a pose that seemed to emphasise the air of vulnerability that surrounded her. And suddenly Nikos found himself thinking about all the times he’d kissed his way down her slender, creamy throat while she’d writhed and moaned his name in a desperate plea for satisfaction. He remembered how shy she’d been the first time, how hard he’d found it to believe that a woman of twenty-four had so little experience.
Looking at her now, it was like taking a punch full in the gut.
She was wearing a scrub suit covered in pictures of jungle animals and for a moment Nikos was distracted. With her cheerful smile and sense of fun, she’d always had a gift for turning the emergency department into somewhere a child was almost pleased to visit.
‘Hello, Ella.’
She stopped instantly, the smile dying on her lips as she saw him standing there.
Her arms dropped to her sides and she turned so pale that Nikos took an involuntary step forwards, preparing to catch her if she crumpled to the floor. Her breathing was audible and she stepped back, as if his approach represented a physical threat. For a moment she just stood there, her chest rising and falling as she sucked in air and stared at him.
Guilt, he thought grimly, as he watched her face. What she’d done was unforgivable and she knew it. But even as the anger took him by the throat once again, his hands were ready to catch her if she fell. There was no way he was going to let her land on the floor in a heap, pregnant with his child.
His lips burned with the need to speak his mind, but it wasn’t the time or the place so instead Nikos communicated the full force of his anger in a single, hotly charged glance.
Apparently unaware of the dangerous shift in the atmosphere, Rose was cheerful. ‘Ella—good timing. I had no idea that you and Professor Mariakos know each other. I’m delighted. It will make things so much easier. Now I have an experienced team running the paediatric emergency unit. It’s going to be a happy summer.’
Anticipating anything but a happy summer, Nikos kept his simmering, accusing gaze fixed on Ella’s pale, shocked face. ‘It will be like old times.’
Something flickered in her slanting green eyes and he knew that she was thinking what he was thinking—that it was going to be nothing like old times.
This time when they worked there would be no intimate glances, no delicious thrill of excitement as they anticipated the time when they could be alone. No soft whispers, no swift smiles and absolutely no explosive sexual chemistry.
Only anger, blame and recrimination.
She’d hidden the fact that she was pregnant, and no woman was doing that to him again.
This time he wanted the right to be a father to his child.
Pain thumped through his gut and suddenly he wanted to tower over her and demand an explanation right here, right now. He wanted to know why the hell she hadn’t contacted him herself.
The depth of his disillusionment surprised him because he’d always considered himself to be realistic about women.
Rose glanced between them. ‘I’ve scheduled the two of you to work together on every shift right through the summer. I don’t need to tell you that the hospital management are scrutinising this department very closely. I know it’s going to be a fantastic success.’
Nikos dragged his gaze from Ella’s but somehow his eyes simply shifted to a different part of her, this time her abdomen. To the untrained eye her pregnancy wasn’t visible under the loose fabric of her scrub suit and yet he knew her so intimately that he could see the changes in her. Her glorious breasts were even fuller than usual, her hips more generously curved.
Cradling his child.
What would she have to say for herself?
What excuse would she give?
Was she one of these modern feminist women who wanted a baby but not a man?
His mouth tightened into a grim line as he pondered that possibility. If that was the case then she’d picked the wrong guy for a stunt like that. He was Greek. And she was about to discover exactly what that meant.
‘Just breathe normally, sweetheart,’ Ella soothed, her hand gently stroking the little girl’s head as she tried to relax the terrified child. ‘This mask is going to help you breathe.’
The little girl squirmed and clawed at the oxygen mask and Ella felt her heart contract as she tried to calm her. The poor child was terrified and her fear was making her condition worse.
Faced with a potentially life-threatening situation, Ella pushed her own problems to the back of her mind and concentrated on the job she was trained to do.
Moments after Rose had given her the keys to the drug cupboard, the department had suddenly been swamped with patients. A dog bite, two asthma attacks and a child who had slipped while scrambling over the cliffs and sustained a nasty laceration to his lower leg.
Denied any opportunity to dwell on the implications of Nikos’s presence, Ella had taken the most serious of the cases, a three-year-old girl with an acute asthma attack.
Thank goodness for training, she thought numbly as she adjusted the flow of oxygen and carefully observed the child’s breathing. It was only training that was allowing her to function as if nothing was wrong. Her hands were doing the right things and her mouth was saying the right things, but inside she was shocked and shaking.
After Helen’s
